


Sweet Stars

by Brit Hux-Tico (birchwoods01)



Series: Sweet Stars Collection [1]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Gingerflower, Gingerose, Gingerrose - Freeform, I'm the Spy, Rating May Change, Tags May Change, canonverse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:16:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 68,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23218369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birchwoods01/pseuds/Brit%20Hux-Tico
Summary: Having endured a medically induced coma after her injuries following Crait, Rose awakens to find the Resistance trying to rebuild, and that her good friend Finn has moved on to bigger and better missions, leaving her behind.Meanwhile, under Kylo Ren's reign, General Armitage Hux has since lost his place of prominence. He believes Enric Pryde, a secret Sith loyalist, has usurped a powerful position that should be his. Hux is certain Pryde's occult obsessions are going to destroy the Order, along with everything Hux has worked for.But sometimes, it is when you're at your most alone and desperate, that you find your most useful allies.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Rose Tico
Series: Sweet Stars Collection [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1681402
Comments: 242
Kudos: 199





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to [@SheWalksInBeauty26](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SheWalksInBeauty26) and [ @ElfMaidenOfLight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElfMaidenOfLight/pseuds/ElfMaidenOfLight) for Beta reading for me. You're both invaluable to me! 
> 
> This is my first multi-chapter canonverse fanfiction. I ask that you be patient with me on updates, as I have no idea how long it's going to take me to complete this, between all the research necessary and editing. But I am excited to share this idea with you. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!

_ Ajan Kloss: Resistance Base _

_ Post Battle of Crait _

Her mechanics uniform had been incinerated, so she didn’t have many personal items left over to pack up from her stay in the medical unit. Rose slipped her Otomok pendant over her head, giving it a warm-lipped kiss, and tucked it underneath her new military-grade khaki top. The Haysian Smelt was cool to the touch, cradled between her breasts below the fabric, close to her heart. She would carry the memory of Paige there forevermore.

“You ready?”

Rose glanced over her shoulder, turning toward Finn with a warm smile that did not quite meet her eyes.

He stood in the open doorway of the medical unit, his face warm and expressive, hands on his hips.

Just moments ago, they had addressed their relationship. Rose was still reeling somewhat from the conversation, playing it out over and over again in her head.

_ I’m so glad that you’re okay, Rose. _

_ I’m glad that you’re alive. _

He had looked so uncomfortable, and she hadn’t known why, until he opened his mouth, breathed deeply, and continued.

_ You know… I’m thankful but… but about that kiss… _

Rose’s heart sank as she folded the blanket on the top of her bunk, wanting to leave the place tidy for the next patient who might end up there.

“I’m ready. Let’s go.”

This was not how Rose Tico would have wanted things to go. She followed the former stormtrooper turned Resistance Hero through the base, bobbing and weaving past bustling resistance workers in various states of uniform, carrying mechanical gear and weaponry, laughing with one another, prepping various stations, always ready for war. She had been passed out in the medical bay for quite a while from the injuries she had sustained on Crait. She’d nearly missed the entire collapse and reconstitution of the Resistance. 

He had moved on while she’d been under, though she had it on good authority from the nurse droid that he’d visited her whenever he could. He’d been off with the rest of the Resistance heroes, with Poe Dameron and Rey the Jedi, and Chewbacca, trying to rebuild the Resistance from the ground up so that they could have a fighting chance at defeating the First Order. It wasn’t his fault that she’d been in a coma; it wasn’t his fault that he had left her behind. But that didn’t make it hurt any less.

Now, she had received a perfectly fine bill of health and was primed and ready to return to work. She had been promoted, now a Lieutenant General and Chief of the Resistance Corps of Engineers. It was a lofty title compared to her previous one: simple Resistance Mechanic. She was grateful for the upgrade, and proud of herself. But it still stung somewhat that she’d be back at the Resistance Base, safe and separated from her new “friend”, while he got to run off, ever the gallant hero.

Rose studied him distractedly from behind. He looked more handsome, somehow, matured. War had done that to him. Crait had done that to him. She wondered if she had changed, as well…

There were small physical differences. She’d lost weight while under, lost some of that chubby baby fat around her face, her favorite feature so far. Her bangs had grown out, and she was wearing her hair in a much more suitable military style, now that she had a reason to care; a rank to protect. It was pulled back into two little buns, little pieces of dark hair sticking out of the center of each, a remnant of her old hairstyle, which always had refused to lie flat. 

She thought she looked different, but perhaps it was just the sadness in her eyes. Her grief had matured as well, from that of a sister, to the longing of someone, to the envy over someone who had been out experiencing adventure.

“This is your new office!” Finn exclaimed as they approached the large, leafy side of a tall mountain, gesturing to the craggy darkness of an out-cropping of rock cut out of the bottom. 

Rose squinted her eyes in the bright sunlight, covering her brow with a hand, and peered into the darkness of the outcropping. As they stepped under the jutting rock, she realized they were within a deep, cave-like crevice. Portable holo-tables and data pads permeated the space, as well as mechanical paraphernalia such as tools and parts and the like.

“We’ll come back and meet your crew later. They’re on-duty in a little bit.”

On their way to meet the General, they passed many various setups for different officers and hodge-podge groups of workers in the Resistance. The command center was set up in the deepest part of the cave, a place that opened up to a large hole in the mountainside above them, letting in light from above and filtered through by a vine and vegetation covered canopy. Leia waited at the holo-table, her hands pressed flat along the surface, examining some data before her. Rose noted she was looking at planetary schematics, possibly analyzing for potential allies and resources.

“General?” Finn cleared his throat as they approached.

Leia sighed heavily and swept a hand over the sensors on the table, shutting it off before she turned to face them.

“Rose,” General Leia uttered warmly with a smile. “It’s good to see you are well.”

“Th-thank you, General!” Rose responded eagerly, her words tripping a little as she addressed the woman. It was her first time speaking to Leia since she and Paige had met her after the death of their parents, and her heart was hammering nervously. Finn studied her, taking in her anxious smile and smirked slightly, remembering how nervous she got around important Resistance people. 

“You were very brave at the battle of Crait. I admire a woman with spunk.”

The general’s eyes twinkled with mirth and appreciation. Rose laughed giddily, her heart swelling, and shook her head as her cheeks warmed with color.

“Oh no, just-… saving- er… doing what I can to help, ma’am!”

Finn frowned slightly, catching the reference to what she’d said to him before she had kissed him, and passed out. Rose bit her lip, wondering just why she had to be so kriffing awkward when meeting new and impressive people.

“Well, it earned you a promotion! Finn says you were also invaluable in the mission aboard the Supremacy. Says you even gave General Hux a taste of his own medicine.”

Rose bloomed with pride then, her stomach flipping a little at the memory.

Black leather on her tongue, the slight, bitter taste of blood, and his shriek of pain and embarrassment as he tried his best to tug his hand out of her mouth, the way he sneered at her as she spit his blood right back at him.

“Ye-… yeah, I mean… yes. I did, General.”

“We need more fighters like you.”

Rose was practically swooning with the praise. She beamed up at Finn, who was watching her with a fond and mirthful gaze.

“I have a special mission for you, actually, since you’ve shown yourself capable of working undercover.”

The tone of the conversation had gotten quite serious, then. Rose controlled her mirth and forced her feelings to settle down, clasping her hands behind her back and paying close and careful attention to the General.

“Yes, ma’am, anything. Whatever you need me to do.”

“The First Order is on the move,” Leia began, turning back toward the holo-table and punching a few buttons. Some of the Order’s ship’s schematics pulled up, the holograms glitching and blipping in and out due to the old and slightly faulty equipment they had to use. “All we know, currently, is that there has been an attempt to amass new weapons-grade materials and funding. Seems they’ve been in contact with cartels and arms dealers around the galaxy.”

Rose watched the hologram as Leia pinched the screen and slid through the various folders of data before landing on First Order personnel files. An older gentleman’s visage flickered onto the holo-screen, short and thin, with a serious face and dead-looking eyes, dressed in full regalia.

“This is Allegiant General Pryde, newly appointed. I met him once when he was only a Captain in the Empire, upon the Death Star as a girl.”

Leia’s voice had taken on a darker tone, memories of torture and Darth Vader’s heavy breathing lurking over her shoulder.

“He is a menace, a cultist of sorts. He was obsessed with Palpatine and his Sith ideals, though Pryde himself is not blessed with the gift of the Force.”

Rose and Finn listened quietly, studying the form of Pryde, as Leia continued.

“He has arranged a meeting with several arms dealers and cartel leaders on a planet called Rubis a week from now. I would like you and your team to go undercover at this dinner and do what you can to recover any data concerning the First Order’s plans, specifically any weapons or ship data you can get your hands on.”

Rose blinked at the General’s explanation, her heart thumping a little wildly in her chest. She looked from Finn to Leia and back again, mildly confused.

“You… want me to go undercover at a First Order banquet… by myself? With a team?” Rose floundered slightly, feeling a massive pit form in her stomach.

Leia nodded, a bemused smile playing on her lips.

“Finn assures me that you’re more than capable.”

Rose looked to Finn, who flashed her a winning smile and a halfhearted thumbs up. It was touching, really, that Finn was thinking of her so, and she felt mildly guilty for her earlier mental griping at having to be “left behind”. It was looking like she was going to have adventures of her own.

“This project will be yours to spearhead. Any data you recover will be your responsibility to dissect. The Resistance is counting on the Corps of Engineers to help us prepare against First Order tech. We will not be caught unawares on the battlefield. Is that understood, Lt. General?”

“Yes, ma’am!” Rose responded immediately, her tone firm and strong and overeager. “I will not let you down!”

She could feel the weight of the Haysian smelt medallion on her chest, warm against her skin, could almost imagine it pulsing like Paige’s own heart. Her sister would be so proud of her if she could see her today, so proud that she was using her talents and skills for the good of the galaxy and the Resistance. Rose was determined to complete this mission with pride.

“I will have a tech send the information necessary over holonet to your station. Eko, your lieutenant, will know how to retrieve the data you need.”

“Thank you, general!” Rose uttered with strength and resolve, her face screwed up in grim determination. Leia chuckled softly as Rose saluted her.

“If there’s anything else you need, send one of your staff to me and I can take care of it. We don’t have a lot of resources, but we’ll offer you anything we can. This mission is of the utmost importance.”

“Yes ma’am, thank you.” Rose nodded.

Leia gave her a warm smile.

“May the force be with you, Rose.”

Rose practically swooned at that, her eyes going round, her head swimming. She felt her face flush full of color and grinned broadly.

“Uh er-… you-… you too?” she responded, unsure.

Leia dismissed her with another smile, turning round to face the holotable behind her. Rose turned and followed Finn from the area, off to a side portion of the cave that no faction of the Resistance had yet claimed as their workspace.

“What are you supposed to say when she says that… about  _ the Force _ ?” Rose mumbled softly to him as he came to a stop, turning to face her.

“Uh-… I dunno, say it back?” Finn shrugged slightly. “Force sensitives are weird like that. You’re not-…?”

“No.” Rose affirmed with a shake of her head. “No, I’m not. I knew a few though… back on Hays Minor, before I left.”

Finn shifted a little on his feet, looking slightly uncomfortable. Rose studied him, having spent enough time with him now to know when he was trying to deal with some very big question, like whether to run away or fight, whether to abandon all hope or redirect the plan. Finn was like that in many ways: run, fight, or die. There was no gray area.

Rose liked to live in the gray areas. The gray areas had more hope, they allowed more forgiveness.

“Is there anything else I need to know about the mission?” Rose asked by way of conversation, wondering why Finn had called her over into this area and not just dismissed her.

Finn ran a hand over his mouth, rolling his shoulders back and shaking his head once.

“No, I think… I think your crew will be able to handle everything from here,” Finn worried at his bottom lip. “I just-… I want to make sure you’re okay, y’know… with what I told you before.”

Rose’s heart sank like a stone, throbbing painfully on its way down. She forced her face into one of false cheer, however, bobbing her head brightly.

“Oh, yeah, totally fine.” She lied, waving her hands as if it didn’t matter. “It was just the heat of the moment. I thought ‘Oh, I just crashed, and I might die so might as well try kissing him’ … or something like that.”

Finn was watching her with a deep frown, furrows of concern on his forehead.

“Well… I-… thank you, again, Rose. For everything. You’re a real pal.”

His hand came down on her shoulder in an awkward pat. Rose stared at the crook of his elbow on his extended arm, feeling shame and mortification and embarrassment begin to join the heartbreak. She would much rather move on from this subject.

“There’s something that’s been bothering me about the mission,” Rose interjected. 

“What is it?” 

Finn’s eyebrows knitted together but he removed his hand from her shoulder.

“General Hux,” she muttered softly, her stomach churning slightly as she mentioned his name.

“What about him?”

“Won’t he recognize me?” Rose offered, raising her right hand and folding her fingers inward in a wiggling motion. “I mean… it’s kind of hard to forget the person who humiliated you in front of all your subordinates.”

“Hux won’t be there,” Finn answered with a nod of his head, catching on. “He’s actually been sort of… demoted in a way, as far as we can tell. He’s way less involved with things, now.”

That was a surprise.

“And he’s… okay with that somehow?”

“I dunno. Man’s a nutcase,” Finn shrugged. “Maybe he’s losing it now that  _ Daddy Snoke _ is dead.”

“That’s rough.”

Finn gave her an incredulous look.

“Rough?! Are you forgetting what he’s done, Rose? He deserves it.”

“No!” Rose exclaimed with an awkward laugh, shaking her hands. “Don’t get me wrong, he’s a disgusting slimeball, but… it sucks to be valued and then left behind.”

She’d almost be speaking from experience, if it weren’t for General Leia.

“I guess,” Finn said, but his tone was the opposite of agreement. “Are you ready to meet your team?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be!” she replied with warm cheer. 

Finn led Rose back to her Engineering “office”, which was sequestered in one corner, cordoned off by large crates of equipment to separate it from the rest of the cave. It was protected well enough from the elements, like rain, but the humidity of this jungle-planet permeated every space, and the area was damp with condensation that clung to the ceiling of the rock, dripping down on unsuspecting workers every so often. She side-stepped a few loose pebbles that looked like they might roll her ankle in heavy, First Order booted steps, following Finn into the little area.

Her crew of two was waiting for her there. 

Lieutenant Eko Irashi, a young Twi-Lek female, with lavender blue skin and a mild skin condition which left her with splotchy colors of pale periwinkle on her face. Her eyes were wide and slanted, a bright yellow color. She wore khaki fatigues and a black leather harness woven with blue and purple beads that encased her lekku, which rested over her shoulders. 

The second individual, Major Val Alcyon, was a young human male. He was quite tall and relatively thin, with broad shoulders and sandy blonde hair that he kept clipped short and combed to the side. A few strands fell stubbornly over his forehead in the humidity, and a cluster of freckles speckled the bridge of his nose beneath his bright, ice blue eyes. He dressed all in black, former First Order fatigues, which he’d relaxed by rolling up the sleeves and leaving the collar unbuttoned in the heat of the jungle planet.

Finn made the necessary introductions, gesturing between each of them and Rose.

“Lt. Irashi; Major Alcyon, meet Lt. General Rose Tico.”

Eko gave Rose a soft smile and waved a hand from her seat at one of the portable holo-projectors. Val rose to his feet, however, and snapped his heels together, giving her a straight-edged parade salute and waiting for her to dismiss him.

Rose raised a brow, glancing from Val to Finn and back, clearing her throat softly.

“Is he…?”

“Former First Order, yeah.” Finn said with a soft laugh. “Think you can handle him?”

Rose smiled a little, wondering how Val Alcyon felt to be discussed so openly by his superiors. She studied him, impressed that he did not seem to break even a sweat as he stood at attention, awaiting her order.

It did feel powerful, she had to admit, being obeyed like that. But this overly formal behavior would have to go.

“At ease, Major.” Rose uttered with a soft laugh. “You don’t have to do that around me.”

“Yes, Lt. General, ma’am.”

Val folded his long legs up and crouched once more down upon the crate he had been perched on before Rose arrived, tossing Eko a dirty look as she snickered at his expense.

“It’s great to meet you both,” Rose uttered cheerfully, tucking her hands onto her hips and giving them a warm smile. “I look forward to working with you. And please, just call me Rose.”

Eko seemed more than pleased to do just that, but Val was looking nervous. Rose knew his old FO habits would be hard to break.

“What are they working on right now?” Rose asked of Finn, turning her back on them and stepping toward him, lowering her voice.

“Nothing,” Finn said with a shrug. “Just chilling, I guess. They’re yours to order around.”

“Oh.” Rose frowned, suddenly a little nervous. She’d never had to give orders before. “Alright, then.”

“Hey,” Finn uttered softly, gesturing for her to join him a bit away from Val and Eko, digging in one of his pockets. “ I have something for you. It’s a comms link that feeds directly into mine.”

He extended his gloved hand toward her and Rose held out her palm. He dropped the cylindrical object into her hand, the metal cool to the touch.

“I won’t be on base often, but if you need anything, ever, anything at all, contact me via this and I’ll do what I can. I want to-… to be there for you, if you need me.”

Rose closed her hand around the comms link and gave him a warm smile, one that was genuine. 

“Thanks, Finn. It means a lot. You’re a good friend.”

This seemed to be the end of their conversation. Rose studied his handsome face, a throb of longing running through her. She still loved him, in many ways, though Rose easily loved lots of people. It had hurt her deeply that the first thing he felt compelled to tell her when she’d woken from her medical slumber was that he did not love her in return. She understood why he’d needed to do it, but it hurt all the same. It left a foul taste in her mouth.

She sighed softly, a small, resolute sound, and gave him a little wave.

“See you around!” she murmured, watching him turn and walk away from her, waving an arm over his head and tossing her a beautiful smile.

She cursed herself and the heart she wore on her sleeve as her eyes threatened to fill with tears. She bit them back, gritting her teeth with firm strength, and steadied herself to approach her team. Sadness could wait for the evening, for time she had alone with her thoughts. Right now, she had a job to do.

“Major Alcyon!” Rose called to catch his attention, turning toward him. 

Val snapped to attention once more as she called his title and name, rising from his seat and falling into an eager salute.

Rose had to fight not to roll her eyes, her hands on her hips.

“Yes, ma’am?” he responded, not meeting her eye but looked over her head instead. 

“This is not the First Order,” Rose snapped at him, her tone biting even though her lips were curled in a slight smile. “At ease FOR ALL TIME, if you please.”

Eko was outright laughing at him as Val slid slowly out of his rigid stance, his ears burning, his expression sour.

“I-… you are due respect, Lt. Gener-,”

“Rose,” she insisted, her expression sympathetic and soft. “Call me, Rose. And Eko, we don’t laugh at our fellows.”

Eko stopped abruptly, her eyes blinking rapidly as if slightly stunned, then returned to her holoscreen, clearing her throat loudly.

“When did you leave the First Order, Val?” Rose asked conversationally, gesturing for him to have a seat once more. She herself pulled up a crate, struggling to tug it closer, as the one she’d picked was heavier than she’d thought it would be. Val hurried to help her, adding an extra hand in lugging it over. Once she was settled on it, he had a seat as well, folding his hands together over his lap.

“Only a … a month ago,” he murmured softly. “I was stationed on the Steadfast.”

“Which ship is that?”

“The one Allegiant General Pryde captained himself, ma’am.”

Val looked nervous for some reason, as if telling Rose that he worked for THE new leader of the First Order’s army would make her think him any less worthy of joining the Resistance.

“Oh, that’s useful to know!” Rose replied instead, her eyes shining with interest. “Do you know a lot about the ship, then?”

Val relaxed somewhat, nodding fervently.

“Oh-… yeah, loads. It’s pretty much your standard First Order ship, Resurgent-class, named after the Star Destroyer that fell at the battle of Jakku.”

Rose thought of the mission they were about to undertake, one in which she and these crew-members of hers would be stuck in a room with Allegiant Pryde. Val would obviously have to run backup off-site, he couldn’t go undercover. 

“What can you tell me about Pryde?” she questioned softly. 

“The Allegiant General?” Val had a hard time letting go of titles, but he made a face when he spoke. “He’s quiet, cruel; a pretentious bastard, really. The Steadfast serves as the meeting place of the Supreme Council. The Supreme Leader himself regularly lives on the ship, along with General Hux.”

“General Hux is on the Steadfast?” Rose found that very curious. “Why does he not have his own ship?”

“The … well, it is rumored that the Supreme Leader likes to keep him close. He does not trust him.”

Curious, indeed. Rose wasn’t sure why this new bit of intel intrigued her, but it drew on something deep within her, something that was quite satisfied to see General Armitage Hux put in his place. 

“Okay, new question.” Rose smiled at him, folding her hands together. “Why don’t you tell me why you left the First Order?”

Eko was listening from her place over in the corner, her bright blue eyes peeking around the side of her holoscreen, fingers still and unmoving on the keypad.

Val did not speak for a long moment, his face screwed up into an expression of discomfort, his eyes focusing on a clump of dirt on the ground before him.

Rose waited patiently for him to gain the desire to speak. She knew it could be difficult for those who had to change their lives so radically. He could have parents at home who completely disagreed with the change, who felt him a traitor to their way of life, who-

“He fell in love with an officer,” Eko supplied quietly, but clearly, interrupting Rose’s thoughts.

Val tossed her a dirty look, his fists clenching in his leather gloves.

“I never should have told you that. Why would you te-,”

“You… left the First Order because you fell in love?” Rose was more surprised than anything, and carefully controlled her expression to avoid harming Val’s feelings.

He sputtered slightly, his face turning a dark shade of red, and turned his head away from the pair of them, lips pursed.

“I… he… hmm…”

It was obviously difficult for Val to say. Rose was about to release him from the obligation, when Eko piped up for him.

“He fell in love with a Lieutenant, some guy called… Maitai or something.”

“Mitaka!” Val snapped at her, his face somehow now a deep purple. “His name is Lieutenant Mitaka.”

“Whatever,” Eko mumbled back. “Some big wig discovered them and advised Mitaka to get rid of him, something about breaking a fraternizing rule between higher ranking officers and subordinates.”

“I came to the Resistance,” Val interjected, cutting in with a low, carefully controlled voice. “Because my family would have been ashamed to know I had been stripped of all rank.”

Rose stared at him, her eyebrows wide, disbelieving.

“I was only serving the First Order because my parents ordered me to, for the  _ glory of the family _ . And I absolutely could not stand serving on the same side as someone who had… had hurt me,” Val sneered, falling easily out of his tight-lipped behavior and into a passionate tirade. 

“I have no personal stake in this war.”

Rose took a deep, steadying breath, her hands clenched tightly in her lap. She didn’t feel any negative vibes toward the young man, but she felt the need for caution all the same. She’d yet to meet a First Order Officer who wasn’t entirely dedicated to the cause and wasn’t yet sure if she could trust him.

“Well, you will serve an invaluable asset to the team, with your experience. I’m glad to have you here, Val.”

He seemed slightly disconcerted still, but nodded, clenching his fists on his knees as if he were struggling not to stand and salute her again.

Rose turned toward Eko then, a warm smile on her lips.

“What about you, Eko? What brought you to the Resistance?”

The young Twi’Lek female met Rose’s gaze, her soft, lavender blue shoulders shrugging behind the console.

“I was a slave,” she began, her eyes darting over to peer at Val, who was feigning interest in something else. “On Tatooine, belonged to one of the Hutt’s. They thought I was too ugly for sex-work, so they taught me mechanics. I’m very skilled at what I do.”

Rose wasn’t sure what to address first, the fact that Eko had just easily referred to herself as ugly or the fact that she had a lot in common with her, already, just from the comparison of their skills. Before she could comment, however, Eko went on.

“I earned my freedom by gambling at night with the Troopers who came into town. I paid the slaver who owned me, then hunted down someone who could tell me how to join the Resistance. I,” and here she paused, tossing Val a dark, dirty look. “I hate the Order. I want to destroy the machine, so little girls like me can grow up to do whatever they want. It’s why I’m here.”

If Eko felt that way and she was still able to work with Val, that spoke volumes about his character as much as it did hers. Rose hoped that their antagonistic behavior so far would not last too long, and that it was mainly differences in personality, rather than anything serious.

“Well, I am very glad to meet you both. We have an important mission from General Organa. I hope you’re ready to work.”

Both of her subordinates raised their faces up to hers and gave her soft smiles of assured faith. It sort of went to Rose’s head, to have people beholden to her every whim. She wondered if she’d be up to the task of commanding them.

“Where do we begin?” Eko asked with a grin.

Rose grinned back at her.

_ The Steadfast: First Order Star Destroyer _

_ Deep Space  _

“The Supreme Leader has gone on a mission and has not stated when he will return,” Allegiant General Pryde stated over the background hum of space travel.

General Armitage Hux tightened his gloved fists where they rested beneath the table, the sound of squeaking leather lost in the hum of the star destroyer around him. He examined the faces of his fellows, those privileged enough to sit on the Supreme Council, taking in their general stares of compliance and order.

His gaze slid sideways, then, barely concealing his minute disgust, as he took in the form of the  _ Allegiant General _ himself, seated in the place of honor where the Supreme Leader would typically sit: the head of the table.

His stomach turned over with nausea, gnawing at itself, empty and aching. He’d been skipping rations of nutritive milk from stress, unable to wash anything down aside from a few fingers of whiskey in the evening.

“How are things progressing with the dinner party on Rubis?” Pryde asked, his tone lofty and full of arrogance.

How Hux longed to let the concealed blade in his sleeve extend slowly into his gloved hand, a whisper on leather, and sink it slowly into the base of Pryde’s skull, downward into his spinal cord and sever the nerves there, rendering him incapacitated. Hux should be the Allegiant General; Grand Marshall.  _ He _ should be the one running the galaxy.

But, it was important to remember who one’s real enemies were. Pryde was a nasty thorn in his side, but the real issue was Ren. If it weren’t for Ren, Hux would be  _ Supreme Leader by _ now. He would have all he had ever wanted, all within his grasp.

Typical of force users to destroy everything with their wishy washy, overtly religious ways.

And Pryde was the worst of them, an old relic from the days of the Empire, his father’s  _ boon companion _ , one of the crème de la crème, a follower of the ways of the Sith.

Pryde was going to destroy the galaxy, and Hux couldn’t stand it.

“Arrangements have been made. Invites have been sent. More than half have responded positively,” Admiral Griss said automatically, his voice thin and greasy; sniveling.

Armitage was surrounded by kiss-ass fools who were going to allow the galaxy to be run into the ground by Force users and Sith fanatics. 

“Good,” Pryde nodded toward Griss, shifting his arm on the sleek black table and pinning his gaze on Hux near the end.

“General Hux,” he stated flatly, by way of getting his attention.

Hux straightened in his chair, back ramrod straight, and forced himself to meet Pryde’s eyes.

“Yes, Allegiant General.”

“The Supreme Leader has changed his mind and ordered that you attend the dinner. Please see that you are dressed accordingly.”

Armitage could barely contain his fury, a fire that suddenly threatened to lash out. On his face, however, the only indication of his displeasure was the flare of his nostrils and the clench of his fist beneath the table.

“Of course, Allegiant General,” he replied again, for duty’s sake.

He was thankful for the meeting’s end, thankful that he could retire to his quarters for the day, where he could be alone with his anger. He stormed his way through the  _ Steadfast _ , intent on one thing and one thing only, which was making it to his room before he exploded with fury.

Ren was playing a game. 

Hux knew the only reason Ren wanted him to attend this pointless ruse of a dinner was to keep him close to the Allegiant General. Hux could barely stand it, could barely breathe, feeling the leash and collar Snoke had placed around his neck grow tighter and shorter and much more taut. Ren did not trust him, for good reason, as Hux would sink a knife in his back or put a blaster in his gullet faster than the Force itself. It frustrated him to no end that he had no room to breathe, to act, to scheme and plot.

The pneumatic doors swished open to his chambers and he strode right in, turning to seal the doorway for the day, intent on keeping intruders out and to have some small modicum of privacy.

His hands fisting tightly, shoulders collapsing beneath the weight of his anger, he strode for the wet bar near the door and fumbled with the decanter there, intent on getting a shot of whiskey down to calm his nerves. He poured himself two fingers, turned toward the ice blue sofa, and bit the fingertip of one of his gloves, pulling it away from his hand with his teeth.

He lay the glove carefully on the back of the sofa, swapped hands with the tumbler, and did the same with the other hand. The second glove joined its brother. 

Sinking onto the sofa with a sigh, Hux kicked his feet up, laying his head down against the headrest, closing his eyes, the tumbler resting on the seat next to him, held tight in his bare hand.

He felt a little shift in weight in the cushion next to him and opened his eyes.

His ginger cat, Millicent, crawled into his lap, purring contentedly, and Hux’s rage immediately faded into the background. His one and only joy, this cat. His one and only love. He always had room in his heart to make time for her.

Hux buried his fingers in her soft fur, stroking leisurely along her back, just the way she liked it, while he took a sip from the whiskey glass, tasting it on his tongue before swallowing it down.

It burned; satisfying. 

“I have to stop them,” he spoke aloud to the feline, his gaze going far away as he stared across the room. “They’re making a mess of everything, bloody force sensitives.”

Millicent pressed against him, rubbing along his torso, her purring increasing in volume.

He scowled as her nuzzling stuck ginger hairs all over his uniform. He pressed a hand between her shoulder blades, attempting to still her, but she squirmed and flopped against his chest. 

He sighed, relenting. The day was done, and he had more uniforms waiting in his cabinets, washed and cleanly pressed. He gazed at her with a fond expression.

The gears in his head began to turn as he scratched softly beneath her chin. Millicent stuck her head out, orb eyes closing, indicating her enjoyment of the gesture. 

It was all about knowing the right spot, the right button to push. If he played his cards right, if he was careful, perhaps he could end up righting this ship before it fell to the whims of fools. 

“I refuse to give up on the First Order,” he mused aloud. It had been his life’s work, the only thing he had ever known. If they destroyed it, in a way, they’d also destroy him. 

“Something must be done…”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose and her crew go on their mission to Rubis, unaware that everything will not go exactly according to plan due to the presence of a certain ginger-haired General.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THEY MEET! 
> 
> Thank you to [ @ElfMaidenOfLight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElfMaidenOfLight/pseuds/ElfMaidenOfLight) for Beta reading for me. I seriously appreciate your strong insight into these characters and your supreme skill with the written word! 
> 
> Enjoy. :)

The image of the planet Rubis rotated slowly on the holotable, projected above the table’s surface. Gathered around it were three individuals, two humans, one Twi’lek, all intent and focused on the data before them. 

“The planet’s typically more red,” Val explained in a tepid voice, one gloved hand fiddling with the controls on the pad. Their faces glowed with the blue color of the visual, the holopads they were using being of the older, outdated variety. 

The trees on Rubis only produced a rich, scarlet colored leaf, while the surface of the planet was covered in grasses and ivy and other various types of vegetation. The climate was temperate, a perfect, pleasant temperature the entire year, which led it to be a popular destination for those looking to relax. 

“What’s it’s public draw?” Rose asked conversationally. “Why’s the Order meeting there, of all places?”

Eko took the opportunity to answer this question, rattling off a stream of facts as if she’d digested a whole databank’s worth of information only that morning. 

“Unlike a typical planet’s core, this one emits three times the normal amount of heat. The underground streams are then pumped to the surface, rich with minerals. There are many resorts with hot springs for guests in the planet's more densely populated areas.”

“It is a popular destination for the wealthy,” Val finished, giving Rose a significant look. 

The wealthy. The ones the First Order needed. The ones with deep pockets and cold, black hearts. 

Rose sighed, rubbing her face with a palm, looking tired and worn. 

“Alright,” she uttered after a quick, deep breath. “What’s the name of this place they’re throwing the party?”

“Eeris Shanaka’s Tea House.”

Rose examined Eko’s expression, one brow raised slightly, her lips pulling into a subtle smirk. 

“They’re… having dinner at a tea house? How elegant of them.”

“Ah-,” Val interrupted, giving Eko a sharp look that said all he felt about her lack of explanation. “The tea houses are famous on Rubis, they’re not actually tea houses at all. They are places where powerful and wealthy people can rent entertainment by the hour; very expensive and luxurious.”

Rose suddenly felt sick to her stomach. The First Order was hosting their recruitment parties in base pleasure houses now? She at least hoped these individuals were not slaves. 

Val, reading her expression, hurried on to explain. Eko watched him skeptically, her personal experience as a slave coloring all of her opinions surrounding this subject.

“Oh, it’s not sex work,” he said with an emphatic shake of his head. “Far from it, though… the First order has been known to take what it wants, regardless.”

Eko made a scoffing snort, her eyes rolling in her head.

Rose would like to see some handsy First Order officer even try that with her or Eko. She’d punch her fists right through their face. 

“If it’s not sex work, what is this…  _ entertainment _ ?” Rose questioned distastefully.

“Singing, dancing, extreme beauty techniques, flirtation and witty banter,” Eko rattled off, ticking her fingers down against her palm as she listed them. 

“They accompany the men during their dinner and in the co-ed baths, for a tip. But it’s strictly professional, no hands on in the public eye. Sex work is heavily frowned upon on Rubis,” Val continued with a firm nod, seeming pleased he could comfort Rose in this manner with his knowledge.

“But it happens,” Eko stated flatly, her expression sour with fury. 

Val’s face colored red with embarrassment or irritation, or some emotion in-between. Reluctantly, he conceded this to her with a curt nod. 

Rose chewed on her bottom lip. Obviously, the best way to go undercover was to have eyes in the room. Either of them, Rose or Eko, though Rose preferred it to be her just to be sure, would need to plug a data chip into the holotable at some point during the dinner and rob the data they needed. 

“You’re sure the dinner party is during the presentation? They won’t have the presentation before, off-site, then come back to wine and dine their guests?”

Rose wanted to be sure to think of everything. 

“I’ve already spoken to a Resistance sensitive server in Eeris’s tea house,” Eko confirmed with a curt nod, now seeming proud of herself for having jumped the gun on intel. 

They’d both been doing this, she and Val, vying for Rose’s attention and affection, as if they had to work out between the two of them which was more useful to her as an underling. 

It was giving Rose a headache. But it was also kind of adorable. 

“How do you know this server is Resistance friendly?” Rose asked, her tone darkened with worry. 

She still did not know these two, but they had surprised her with their tenacity and willingness to jump on board a task. After they’d received the intel from Leia over the holonet stating which planet, which location, and which individuals to target, both Eko and Val had hit the ground running. It was almost too much, as Rose was finding she had very little to do with their scurrying to impress her. 

“Because the First Order destroyed their planet,” Val uttered in a very quiet voice, his posture still and stern. “They were from Hosnian Prime.”

“Ah,” Rose made a sound of acknowledgement. Having your planet blown up would just about do it. Rose could sympathize. 

“Alright, then. Is this contact of yours able to get us in?” 

Eko already had an answer for that. She grinned at Rose, then moved over to one of the crates, lifting the half-propped lid with a lackadaisical thrust, tossing it to the dirty cave floor before rummaging inside, retrieving two silky looking, floral patterned robes with large, drooping bell sleeves. 

“Yeah. They’ve already sent us the uniform!”

Rose studied the silk, reaching and taking one from Eko. It was a deep red color, and covered in fluffy, pink blossoms of some sort. Vine-like patterns in green and yellow patchwork thread crawled up the bodice and down the bell sleeves. It felt exotic and lovely in her hands, cool to the touch in Ajan Kloss’s sticky, humid climate. She held it up to her chest and smiled softly at Eko, who looked like she was having the time of her life, running her blue-purple fingers over the bright yellow silk of her own robe. 

“This is a uniform?” Rose could not imagine someone working everyday of their life in something as beautiful as this. It felt so expensive. 

She watched as Eko slid her arms and hands through the baggy sleeves of the robe, folding the sides in around her body and tucking the fabric up into a flat fold against her waist. She looked like she was having fun at least, though Rose could not feel so much joy. 

Holding the fabric in her hands was starting to make this all a little too real. In just a matter of days she would be in the same room as the main military leader of the entire First Order. 

She’d been within similar proximity to such a powerful individual before. She’d had his entire, undivided attention on her, his gloved hand touching ever so delicately to her chin, as if he might like to do something untoward with her if they had been born in different lifetimes, in a different galaxy, in a different war. It was a gesture of power, of ownership, of control, and it made Rose’s stomach churn. 

Such men were wicked. They deserved to be punished. 

“Alright, sit down, both of you,” Rose ordered them, still not quite having found her ‘boss’ tone. 

Val obeyed her instantly, however, already faithful and loyal. It was part of his indoctrination. 

Eko took a few more moments to awe at herself in the yellow robe, then finally slunk over to have a seat beside Val on one of the crates. 

“Let’s go over the plan again, one more time.” 

Rose folded the robe in her hands with gentle turns of the fabric, laying it aside on the holotable’s command board.

The three of them would depart for Rubis two days early. A Resistance pilot would drop them off on a nearby planet and they would take public in-system transport the rest of the way. It would cause the travel time to lengthen, but heighten their cover status. 

A day early, Rose and Eko would begin work as serving girls in Eeris’s Teahouse. Val would monitor from a nearby location; they’d all be wearing instant comms devices in their ears, miniscule and easy to ignore, one of the only hightech devices the Resistance had been able to share with them. Val would supply them with intel, hack into the security systems of the teahouse, and watch from afar, providing backup routes and assistance if anything went awry. 

The most dangerous part would be stealing the data, but Eko and Val had insured her that the men at the table would likely be slovenly drunk within the hour, which increased the ability to sneak a data chip into the right place.

When they’d finished discussing, Rose made them go through the plan again, and again, and one more time, just to be sure. They did not complain, but answered her dutifully, studiously, respectfully. Not even Eko rolled her eyes. 

They knew how serious this mission was. It was important for the Resistance. But it was also risky. 

“We’ll need to be careful about when we leave the party, to avoid suspicion. If Pryde is as cruel and perceptive as Val says he is, we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves. We leave out the back, rendezvous with our ride, and head back to base.”

It seemed to be an airtight, foolproof plan, but Rose still worried. She found herself wishing that Finn would be going with her, not off on some foolhardy mission with Rey the Jedi and Poe Dameron and Chewie. 

She sighed heavily, becoming distracted, and turned her face away from her crew, grabbing for her pendant and clasping it tight in her fist. 

Silence descended as Rose fell deep into thought. Then…

“Lieutenant General,” Val interrupted her softly. 

Rose’s gaze snapped back to his, her eyes narrowing at the formality. 

“Rose-,” he corrected at the look, swallowing a lump in his throat. “We-... this mission… everything is going to be okay.” 

He looked so young, so sweet, so relatively innocent to the ways of cruelty. How had he ever served in the First Order? 

Eko smiled excitedly, her bright yellow eyes shining. 

“Yeah. We got this. Don’t worry!”

Rose studied their cheerful faces, Eko’s bright and joyful, Val’s subtle and soft. She immediately stuffed down her anxiety and grinned back at them, determined to be the best, most positive, upbeat leader she could be. 

“Yeah,” she uttered firmly, her smile wrinkling her eyes. “Let’s kick some First Order ass.”

Unaware of the schemes in motion around them, the First Order dinner party arrived at Eeris’s Teahouse in a solemn group. Their transport dropped them off in the serene and tranquil garden near the building’s front entrance. Pryde, followed by Griss and a handful of other officers, walked down the ramp, followed closely by Hux, whose hands were clasped tightly behind his back, his head held high, his expression stern.

Light gravel crunched beneath their boots as they walked through the garden. The smell of heady blossoms, sickly sweet and incredibly pungent, permeated the air. All around them were tall, gangly trees, their bark scored with black and white patches, limbs covered in the leafy red foliage the planet was well-known for. Somewhere in the distance, the pleasing sound of rushing water could be heard, as well as the fluted twittering of small, avian creatures. 

Hux thought the overall effect was quite beautiful, though he had very little time to ponder the notion, his thoughts interrupted by ruminations over the events planned for the evening. 

They would meet two important cartel bosses and three arms dealers that evening. Hux did not remember their names, nor did he really care to. This was not his mission. He was the cur on the leash, the one they couldn’t let out of their sights. He might make mischief if left to his own devices on the  _ Steadfast _ . 

He planned on making mischief anyway. Hux was a patient man, a careful man, a cunning man. 

There were certain advantages at his disposal, even as he was forced to attend this party. He already decided to use the evening as a sort of intel gleaning of his own design, choosing to think positively about the situation. At least he would be privy to the large summation of Pryde’s plan, or at least what he was telling their allies.

Given an hour’s time before dinner, Hux retired to his room on the first floor with his bag without a word to any of the men in his party. Arriving at his room, he noted that the doors were made of paper, like much of the teahouse, but still operated pneumatically, and flushed open with a crinkly shifting sound as he approached. The door slank closed behind him again as he stepped inside. Pausing to remove his shoes at the entryway, he lined them up in the corner, then stepped up onto the hard wood surface of the floor. 

The room was pleasant, if not small. There was a large bed along one solid wall, a rug with patterns of intricate florals and feathered creatures covering the majority of the floor. A decorative table covered with large, living blooms filled the room with a delicate scent. The back wall was also a set of paper doors, one of which lay open, revealing a glimpse into the inner gardens beyond, and the hot spring, which resided in the center of the grounds. 

Hux could see steam rising off of it’s surface, and many guests were already resting within, towels bunched on their heads, their eyes closed in expressions of utter relaxation. 

He scowled, unwilling to share his privacy with strangers, and strode purposefully forward, hitting the command button to shut the paper doors. 

Sighing and massaging his temples, he set his bag down on the floor beside the bed and began to disrobe. He had an hour until he had to be present at dinner, dressed in the absolute finest, ready to kiss Pryde’s ass like the rest of them. 

An hour later, clean and dressed in a freshly pressed three piece suit with white underclothes and a white cravat at his throat, he made his way to dinner, his black greatcoat with General’s insignia on the sleeve overtop. Hands clasped behind his back in salute, posture straight, shoulders back and down, he was determined to keep his typical professional impression.

He was seated at the end of the dinner table, beside Griss and one of the spice cartel bosses. Hux’s long legs folded up beneath him as he sank down onto the cushion at the low table, resting his gloved hands in his lap and nodding greetings in response to the individuals down at his end of the table. 

All the seats were spoken for and only Pryde stood, dressed in formalwear similar to Hux’s. 

“Good evening, esteemed supporters of the First Order. We welcome you to this celebratory dinner. As is usual, please refrain from conversing about sensitive information until after dinner. Enjoy.”

Pryde spread his hands forward and, as if he were a god of plenty, the paper doors behind him slid open and a line of six or so girls dressed in silken robes trailed in, carrying plates and dishes of delicious smelling food. 

Hux’s stomach rolled in response to the smell, half disgusted by the richness and half enamored with desire for something substantial to finally gnaw on. 

“Finally, dinner,” the cartel boss at his right uttered impatiently, taking a large cloth napkin from the table and stuffing it unceremoniously down the front of his shirt. 

Hux’s lip curled. How uncivilized. 

He busied himself with his own napkin, unfolding it carefully and laying it gingerly in his lap, patting it gently into place on his thighs as if that would keep it from sliding right off. As he turned to raise his head and shift back, making room for the girl on his right to lean over him and lay a platter of food on the table, the girl jumped and exclaimed softly; the platter she was carrying shook in her hands. 

“K-... Kriff-,” she muttered shakily as a large, sauce covered chunk of meat rolled off of the platter and fell onto Hux’s napkin-clad lap with a wet smack. 

He snarled softly, raising his hands away from the mess as if he could not bear to touch it. His head snapped in her direction, but the girl had slammed the platter hard down onto the table and turned her body away, already trying to make her hurried exit toward the door. 

“Get back here!” he demanded immediately, his tone frozen over with cold fury. 

The girl froze, her shoulders quivering in the red-silk robe that covered them, the little tendrils of dark hair sticking out of the two buns on the back of her head shaking with the motion. 

Hux swelled with smug appreciation. She _ should _ be terrified of him. 

“You are going to leave without cleaning up your mess? Take this napkin, girl, and bring me another.”

The girl tucked her head down, her eyes as well, and turned slowly toward him, avoiding looking into his face. She folded up to her knees on the floor and crawled forward slightly, still averting her gaze, and extended a small hand toward him to take the napkin. 

He wrapped the meat delicately in the folds of the cloth and placed it in her palm, a nagging thought itching in the back of his mind. 

Why did she conceal her face? Was she  _ that  _ terrified of a First Order General? 

Just as she’d closed it over the bundled napkin, and before she could withdraw her hand, his own shot out, lightning fast, his glove closing in an iron-grip around her wrist. 

She gasped out loud and looked up at him, eyes shining with tears. 

It was _ her…  _ the one who’d… 

A torrent of emotion battered down upon him, a million feelings, each more sour and wrathful than the last. It tore through his defenses, and his face screwed up with the effort to not lash out at her immediately. His hand tightened on her wrist, the leather of his glove creaking with the motion, and he was unable to resist pulling her toward him, satisfied when she fell forward onto her elbow on the carpet, prostrate and trembling. 

He thought quickly. She had gone undercover before, for the Resistance, on his own ship, right under his very nose. She was likely undercover now. He could have her executed for it. The thought delighted him, to think of dragging her out of the room himself, cuffing her, imprisoning her on board their transport. 

He allowed himself to picture it: his gloved hand in her hair, her kicking and screaming and fighting back with all that fire and spirit she possessed. 

Or… 

He could wait. Let this play out. He was the only one who knew her true identity, though he did not even know her name. 

She glared up at him through kohl-darkened lashes with a dark, all-consuming fury. The sight of it caused something illicit and thrilling and perhaps a little forbidden to curl with pleasure inside of him. Her eyes issued a challenge, her lips, bright red with rouge, trembled, revealing her true feelings: terror and wrath. 

Oh, she hated him. The thought brought a slight smirk to his lips. 

He released her.

She pulled her hand back, sitting up on her thighs and giving him a tense, questioning stare. 

But Hux was done with her, or at least, that was what he wanted her to think. He turned from her as if nothing had happened, returning his attention to the men around him at the table without even a single word or quirk of a brow. 

To Rose, that was worse than if he had shot her point-blank then and there with a blaster. 

She sat there a moment longer, the blood roaring in her ears, heart hammering heavily in her chest. She had no idea how she was still alive, since he’d obviously recognized her. 

He wasn’t supposed to be here… 

Eko met her gaze across the room, giving her a pointed look as if to ask ‘Alright there, boss’?

Rose forced herself to stand, clutching the napkin with a tight, white-knuckled fist. 

None of the dinner guests acted as if anything was out of the ordinary, which made her sick to her stomach. How many times did a First Order officer treat their waitstaff as if they were mere property, for all of these men in all their powerful glory to continue on with eating their meal as if nothing was wrong. 

Rose broiled with fury. 

She stared at the back of Hux’s ginger-head, his stupidly perfect hair-do slicked back with pomade. He did not react, and only then did she feel it was safe to move. She headed for the door, controlling her steps with careful consideration until she was out of sight, breaking into a run once safely out in the hall. 

She passed the kitchens, sliding into a dark, unused corridor at the end of the hall, wrapping her arms around herself and trying to hold it all in and not cry. 

She just kept repeating over and over in her head:  _ he’s not supposed to be here… _

Why was he here?

“Lt. General?” a familiar voice questioned into the comms device in her ear. 

Rose pressed her lips together, wiping carefully at the tears in the corner of her eyes so as not to destroy her makeup. 

“Hux is here,” Rose told Val in a hushed whisper, quickly turning to glance up and down the corridor to ensure she was alone. “We need to abort the mission.”

“What?!” Val did not sound pleased, his voice having risen a few octaves. “Did he recognize you?”

“Pretty sure, yeah,” Rose laughed wryly, her limbs still trembling, gooseflesh covering her body. “I have no idea why I’m not dead right now.”

There was silence on the other end of the comms. Rose tried to wrack her brain, to think, what reason Hux would have not to exploit this for his own personal gain. 

Maybe he didn’t recognize her after all. Maybe she’d only thought he had. Maybe he looked at all the girls he bossed around and threw on the floor like that, all the girls who’d threatened his perfect and pristine composure with messy food accidents. 

Rose felt compelled to leave the mission, concerned that her presence would get both her  _ and _ Eko killed. 

But Eko was inexperienced: she was a mechanical engineer, not a spy.

Rose’s stomach opened up with a pit of uncomfortable fear. This was her mission, she was their leader, and even as small a bit of experience she had, she was the most experienced of the lot of them. She could not leave.

“What if he’s going to toy with me?” Rose thought aloud, glancing back down the hallway toward the room. “Use me?”

“If General Hux wants to use you for something, it might benefit you and the Resistance to accept it,” Val muttered softly, though his tone was dark with an undercurrent of worry. “Perhaps a situation like that could be manipulated.”

Val was smart. He was also mildly cold and calculating, traits the First Order valued and cultivated within their ranks. He did not fit in at the Resistance, but she was glad they had him all the same, even just to give her an insight into how the other side might think. 

“I-,” Rose took a deep, steady breath, closing her eyes and focusing on the feel of the pendant against her skin beneath her robe. “I’m going back in.”

“You have your blaster on your hip, remember,” Val uttered softly. 

Rose smirked slightly and nodded her head. 

“True.” 

Hux was beginning to wonder if the girl had run off. He wouldn’t blame her, but that neither fit with his observations of her nor his plans, and besides, he still had no napkin. He picked lazily at his food, prodding around with his fork, unwilling to really dig into anything out of desire to avoid needing to clean anything up. But she returned quickly, her cheeks blazing with color, her eyes filled with those same two emotions: loathing and fear. 

The rest of the girls had joined the dining table, part of their job as hostesses. There was a space left for her, conveniently enough at the spot across the table from him. She shuffled toward him and handed him a clean napkin without looking at his face. He took it, unfolding it again and laying it gently in his lap, while she moved around the side of the table and took her seat on the cushion across from them. 

Eko met Rose’s gaze from down at the end of the table, her eyes wide. 

A First Order officer had his hand wrapped around her hip. Rose’s stomach churned. 

Eko was astutely putting up with it, and continued to pour the man more rice-wine with a fake grin, intent on getting him drunk. If he passed out, he wouldn’t touch her anymore. 

Rose took a deep breath, inhaling softly through her nose, and forced herself to peek up into General Hux’s face. 

He was staring at her, his gaze intense; like the heat of a million suns. 

Of Starkiller. 

He looked hungry, the sort of hungry Rose had never seen in a man, a feral sort of hunger that could not be sated by food, or drink, or lust, or money, or even power. 

It made her feel light-headed and nauseous. She forced herself to breathe evenly again, remaining firm and strong beneath that seafoam green gaze, and poured the man to her left a drink of rice-wine. 

He downed it appreciatively, leering at her. 

Rose forced herself to smile. 

The man next to her looked like he was about to say something when the room around them dimmed. Rose turned to glance at the Allegiant General, who had risen to his feet, his cheeks slightly pink with the warmth of drink, and was gesturing toward the center of the table which had been cleared of all food and drink. 

A high-tech, First Order holopad was laid down in the center of the table, unfolded by the gloved hands of a lower officer, and set up. Rose watched with extreme interest, her fear and unease forgotten, leaning forward to try and spy a better look of the technology. She longed to get her hands on it. What she could do with a machine that powerful…

She became aware of Hux watching her again and quickly turned her gaze away, aware he could be sizing her up, attempting to glean any potential information about why she was here. 

It was starting to piss her off. How could she insert the data chip into the holotable if he were staring at her all night?

She forced herself to meet his gaze, pouring all of her loathing and vitriol and self-righteous anger into the look, her eyebrows narrowed, her jaw set, chin held high. 

He studied her expression for a long moment, face impassive, then looked away, finally, as if he were unimpressed. 

For some reason, that wounded her pride a little. 

Perhaps he hadn’t done anything because he did not think her a threat. 

Rose wanted to prove him wrong, and recalled the way his solid bone had felt beneath his fleshy finger as she’d chomped down on it, the self-satisfying sound of his wail of rage and pain. The throught brought a smile to her lips. 

“Gracious guests,” Pryde began, his clear voice ringing through the whole of the room. 

The woman who had been singing in the corner of the room and plucking a gentle, Rubisian folk tune on her stringed instrument, stopped at once, laying the instrument down in her lap. 

“We have invited you here tonight to provide you with another investment opportunity for the First Order. As you know, the Resistance took out two of our most valuable assets in the most recent skirmish.”

Rose had to respect Pryde for stating it like it was and not putting a victory spin on what her side of the war had done. At least he was honest. 

“We seek funding from you, the ones who stand to benefit the most from our superior regime, in the hopes of creating new weaponry that will assure our victory.”

Pryde finished his little speech and gestured toward the officer operating the holopad. The young man fiddled with some buttons and a clear image popped up, hovering above the pad. It was a new series of TIE fighter. Rose was too far away to read the schematics listed below the image, and just barely resisted the urge to lean closer and try to see them. 

She wasn’t here to read the data. She was here to steal it. 

She tightened her fists on her thighs, swallowing a dry lump in her throat. Her eyes met Eko’s across the table. She smiled slightly, then looked away, and Rose was relieved to see the man had removed his hand from her and was now leaning weakly on the table. 

The holo image shifted through various weapons and ships schematics. Rose tried not to pay too close attention, but instead took it upon herself to get closer, grabbing one of the bottles of rice-wine. She pointedly avoided Hux’s gaze as she did so, and slunk away from the table, backward on her knees, and slid closer toward the man on her right, who sat directly next to the holopad. 

Without asking if he wanted or needed any more, she approached the table and took his little cup from him, resting it closer as she began to pour. 

Her hand “slipped,” and the bottle crashed to the table, rolling around, spilling the booze everywhere. 

The man next to her cried out, and backhanded her across the cheek, sending Rose reeling against the wooden surface of the table. She coughed and covered her cheek with a hand, sliding away, her cheek smarting, but pleased to see that her diversion had worked, and all the girls were scurrying to clean up the mess she had made, Eko included. 

She watched from a distance as the Twi-lek mopped up the fluid with a towel, her sleight of hand unnoticed in the dark of the room as she plugged a tiny data chip into the side of the holopad while swooping the towel round and round, to cover the motions of her hand. 

Rose felt relieved as, moments later, Eko’s hand slipped away from the holopad. She took the bottle in the same hand, grabbed the used towels, then rose to her feet and strolled out of the room with their data. 

The mission was a success! 

“I’m sorry, Allegiant General, continue!” The angry man who had struck her emphasized to Pryde, who nodded with a light smile and continued, not even seeming to take in her presence, or even to acknowledge her existence. 

Rose was just fine with that, and got shakily to her feet. 

Her eyes landed on General Hux, one last time, out of pure curiosity, and she was surprised to find him not looking at her, but at the man to her right, his eyes narrowed in dislike, his fisted hand tightening on the table. A nerve beneath his eye twitched slightly. He must have sensed her looking because his green gaze snapped to hers and he sneered, which was enough to make her get the kriff out of there. 

She shuffled through the doorway quickly, breaking into a light jog down the hallway as distance was placed between her and those vile, horrible men. 

She broke into a lighthearted laugh of relief. 

They had done it. They had won! 

“Congratulations, Lieutenant General,” Val reported in her ear. Rose could hear Eko laughing wildly in the background, loud, whooping sounds of celebratory excitement. “MIssion accomplished. Please rendezvous at our drop point.”

Rose intended to do just that. She sighed with relief and made her way down the stairs, swinging around the corner and heading for the kitchens. She would slip out the back, head up the alleyway, and meet Val and Eko in the rented room serving as their command post. 

“Thornflower.” 

Rose paused mid-step past the ovens, turning on her heel and glancing up into the face of her “boss”, the one who had hired her a day ago based on the recommendation of their Resistance contact here in the teahouse. She smiled slightly, already knowing she would agree to do whatever this woman asked then leave without doing it. She’d had enough of this place and what it stood for. 

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Come with me.”

That had not been expected. 

“Ma’am? I was going to-,”

“Your break is not for hours yet. You are going to come with me. I have a task for you.”

Rose frowned, inhaling deeply through her nose, weighing her options. The woman was a Devaronian, and so far she’d given the impression that if you wronged her or disobeyed her, you’d lose a few fingers or toes. It seemed simpler just to obey her and follow along. 

She was led down a hallway and to a room. The woman paused at the paper door and pressed the manual key on the control pad, then slid the paper door open just a bit. 

“We got a complaint about this room. I need you to clean it.”

Rose barely contained her scowl. 

“I wasn’t hired to clean! I don’t want-,”

“You were hired to do as I say. Now get in there and clean or I’ll lock you in the cellars.”

This galaxy was a mess, Rose thought to herself as she turned toward the door, pushing it more open so she could slide through the gap, emotions churning in her heart. She was going to be fine. She was a Lt. General in the Resistance, and soon she’d be back on a transport and returning to the safety of the base. 

But what about all the other girls who lived lives like this? Who had to do as they were told, who got backhanded regularly and felt up at dinners? All by men who thought they owned the right...

It made her sick. 

She stepped into the room and slid the door behind her, slamming the wooden beam slightly, waiting to move until she heard the Devaronian’s footsteps stomp off down the hall. She would simply slip out into the garden, weave her way around the teahouse and exit through the front. It was not a big-

Rose’s thoughts cut off as something thin and cold as ice pressed against her throat. Before she could even draw in a breath, before she could even think of screaming, a leather-gloved palm covered her mouth, gentle at first, before the fingers tightened around her face, clenched under her jaw, palm flat against her mouth and nose. 

Almost as if the owner were wary of being bitten. 

“You move, you scream, and I slit your throat,” was all he uttered, his voice a deadly whisper. 

General Hux. 

Rose’s flesh crawled with disgust, with fear, with horrifying, panic-ridden terror, as she felt him press up behind her, his breath light over her ear. She inhaled sharply through her nose, the smell of leather heady in her senses. She tested his grip on her mouth, tried to free her teeth, but he’d left her no room. 

She fumbled at her thigh for her blaster. 

He pressed the knife against her throat so hard that it stung. She stopped fumbling. 

“Now,” he uttered gently, his tone even and smug, pompous with pride that he’d managed to capture her. “You, my little  _ rat _ , are going to tell me your name and why you are here.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose and Hux have a little chat, spy to spy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To the most amazing and gracious and magnanimous Beta in the world, I thank you kindly: [ @ElfMaidenOfLight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElfMaidenOfLight/pseuds/ElfMaidenOfLight).
> 
> Enjoy the chapter, loves. 😘

“Now,” he uttered gently, his tone even and smug, pompous with pride that he’d managed to capture her. “You, my little  _ rat _ , are going to tell me your name and why you are here.”

Rose swallowed her panic, squeezing her eyes shut as he shuffled backward, forcing her to move with him. She was conscious of the presence of the blade at her throat, and could feel a tiny dollop of blood drip down her neck. It pooled in the gap at her collarbone, warm to the touch. 

“So compliant for once,” he murmured darkly, as if intrigued, pleased even. 

Bile rose in the back of her throat and she exhaled sharply through her nose, feeling the mattress of the bed bump against the side of her knee. 

“I’ll take that blaster, if you please.”

She waited, eyes averted to the floor. She would have said ‘what blaster’ but with his hand over her mouth, her witty retorts were robbed from her. 

“The weapon, girl.”

His tone was tinged with a bite of impatience. Rose refused to move, resolutely denying him the ability to rob her of all of her defenses. 

“Have it your way.” 

Her eyes widened as she felt his leg slip between hers from behind, and in one swift move, he had kicked her legs out from underneath her, unbalancing them and causing her to turn back toward him. She registered, briefly, with an audible gasp, that he’d released his hold on her mouth, but she was falling, and grunted with fear and surprise as her back bounced into the mattress, her head jolting roughly with the motion. 

He was on her in a moment, one gloved hand gripping her wrists together over her head, his hip digging into hers, keeping her pinned to the mattress. He was fumbling for something with his free hand, his ear near her mouth, and she leaned up and snapped at his earlobe with her teeth. He only just moved out of the way, and her teeth clacked together, bite audible. 

She shifted against him, writhing violently in an attempt to kick him off, and a scream started to build in her throat. But he had grabbed hold of what he was seeking, and Rose felt two cold durasteel loops lock around her wrists. She ceased struggling immediately, knowing it was futile, now that he’d gotten binders on her. He could stun her now, if he wished. 

He lifted his torso away from her, still pinning her with his hip and legs, his expression slightly amused. Rose swallowed, looking away from him as she felt his gloved palm part the robe at her thigh, the leather fabric brushing against her leg as he reached beneath the folds and unlatched the blaster from it’s holster. Having retrieved what he wanted, he stood up and backed away from the bed, training the weapon on her with a subtle smirk. 

“Make sure the safety’s off,” Rose mumbled acerbically, wanting to get a barb in to save her wounded pride. 

His lip curled and his cheekbones blushed with a light dusting of pink, gaze dark and glittering. 

“Impudent of you, but you would do well to remember that I hold your life in my hand.”

Rose rolled her eyes as she sat up slowly, her will to fight momentarily quelling. Her blood still pulsed and pounded rapidly within her, but the uncertainty was gone. He had won this round; at least she knew where she stood. Perhaps she’d be dead in moments, but he’d gone to an awful lot of trouble to incapacitate her without robbing her of life. 

“What do you want, Hux?”

His fingers shifted on the weapon, his hooded gaze darkening with annoyance. 

“ _ General _ Hux,” he corrected her. 

Rose simply stared at him, slumped forward on the bed, her bound wrists in her lap. 

“What is your name?” he demanded when she said nothing in response. 

“Why would I tell you that?” Rose countered. 

Hux studied her, his gaze intensifying. She was smart, very smart. She seemed to already understand that he had different plans for her. She also had not cried out, like most fragile or ridiculously foolish women would.

Against his better judgment, it impressed him. Much like he had been impressed on the  _ Supremacy _ , when she’d glared down her own death without fear, with mighty resolve. He could still feel the strength of her resolve in his finger. 

“Give me a name… any name,” Hux offered, attempting to be diplomatic. For what he was going to ask of her, he had to have her at least partially on his side, and so far she was looking at him like she’d love nothing more than to sink a knife in his back. “What is your code name for this mission?”

Something flashed in her eyes: doubt? Perhaps she was wondering if it was safe enough to tell him even this. 

“Thornflower,” she uttered nonchalantly, her hands tightening into small fists inside the binders. 

“Ah, so you _ are _ on a mission.”

Rose’s mouth dropped open in horror, her eyes wide, and her cheeks flushed all over with bright red shame. Her expression of shock quickly morphed into rebounding fury, and she narrowed her warm, brown eyes on him, shoulders quivering with cold or anger, he couldn’t be sure. 

“Well played,  _ general _ ,” she stated his title with dripping sarcasm, as if raking it through the mud. 

He did not let his displeasure show on his face. Instead, he lowered one hand from the blaster, keeping the other firmly pointed on her, and shifted backward until he reached an armchair. He pulled it forward with his free hand, careful to keep the blaster aimed at her head, and sank into it a few feet from her seat on the bed. 

Rose swallowed her nerves, her stomach turning anxiously within her. 

She wanted to punch him, seeing how he draped himself in that chair, one leg crossed over the other, seeming entirely too comfortable and at ease with his position of power. The arm holding the blaster was resting elegantly along the arm of the chair, though his gloved hand held the weapon trained tightly on her. 

“So,” he began, spine straight, sitting like he owned the entire world and her as well. “Your name is Thornflower and you’re on a mission. To steal our weapons and ship data, I’m sure.”

Where was Val? Why was he not picking up on any of this? A bead of sweat dripped down her back. She refused to answer him, lifting her chin with stubborn strength.

“Did you get what you came here for?” he asked in a quiet voice. He did not look angry, or even concerned. His expression was utterly calm and collected, a bit of a smug smirk toying at the corners of his lips. 

Rose looked away from him. 

“Success,” the word was almost a purr off his tongue. “Congratulations. You’ve improved since we last met, though… now that I’ve caught you, perhaps not much.”

“I don’t need your flattery or your insults,” she snapped at him, unable to keep herself from tilting her head down and raising her hands, prodding about in her ear with a forefinger to be certain the comms device had not fallen out. 

Hux watched her with narrowed eyes. 

“I have a jammer in this room. No comms, in or out, without my say so.”

Nausea swept over her; her last hope had been Val. But if there was a jammer… Val was blind. He’d have no clue what room she was in. Even the video recorded from the hallway would be useless. 

“All this for me? I’m flattered. You really know how to treat a girl,” she sniffed haughtily, witty barbs her only weapon now. 

He did not respond to that but watched her, appraising her, as if curious to see what she’d do or say next. On the surface, he seemed pleased he’d gotten what he wanted, but he was still angry with her. An undercurrent of warning buzzed beneath him, a slight modicum of fury lurking just behind that layer of pleasure.

Rose eyed his right hand, the one holding the blaster, the one she’d bitten. 

“Did I leave a scar?” she asked with a little smile, no mirth in the behavior. 

“Yes, actually,” he admitted dryly, tone heavy with sarcasm. “But I wear it with pride, a reminder that you and your lot are vermin, nothing more.”

“At least  _ my lot _ doesn't have to pay women to spend time with them,” Rose growled, her tone tormentable and teasing. 

He shifted upward in his seat, spine straightening, his lip curling back and brows knitting tightly together over his eyes as he breathed in a sharp hiss. She’d struck a nerve.

“I don’t-,” he seethed, but broke off, clearly rattled. 

Rose smirked at him, raising her palms up in a diplomatic gesture. At her movement, he raised the hand holding the blaster. 

“No, I’m sure you don’t,” she murmured appeasingly, then “that’s why you’re here at a teahouse, paying women to entertain you.”

“I was invited here, I did not wish to-,” Hux cut off, unwilling to give her the upper hand. 

He felt nauseous, images starting to play unbidden in his mind, images of his father, Brendol, yanking women onto his lap, back-handing them, tossing money at them and forcing them to pick it up off the floor as he sent them away in the mornings, and finally, her, this girl, Thornflower, falling to the floor as one of the cartel bosses backhanded her roughly across the cheek. 

He studied the wound, then, his eyes grazing gently over the little purple bruise that was starting to form on the cheekbone beneath her left eye. 

Rose caught the motion, noticed how his expression faltered, a slight vulnerability showing as he examined her wound. Curious… When the injury had happened, he’d looked like he wanted to throttle the man who’d done it. 

So, perhaps General Hux wasn’t a foul womanizer. When he first caught her, he could have taken what he wanted. He’d had her there on his bed, still did, still could. But somehow, she doubted that he would… 

“‘You do not wish to’ what?” she prompted him further, raising both of her cuffed hands and brushing over her wound with a light touch, drawing his attention to it, to gauge his reaction. “Does this bother you?”

He looked quickly away from her, a mask of steel forming over his features once more, hand shifting on the blaster, tightening. In his youth he had imagined, with grim realization, what his own mother had most likely endured with a man like Brendol. The sight of that dark bruise made his stomach churn. 

“I am-... sorry… that man hit you,” he mumbled quietly, so quietly she might not have heard it. 

That was surprising. She felt the titillating response to her surprise in a trickle of interest down her spine, settling as warm curiosity within her belly. She allowed a moment to ponder the feeling, then shook her head as if to wake herself out of it, a heavy sigh leaving her rouged mouth. 

“So… you’re a gentleman as well as a monster. Guess I’m one of the lucky ones.”

His sneer was back, finding her joke distasteful. He shifted once more in his seat, lowering his crossed leg to the floor, leaning toward her slightly. He did not lower the blaster. 

“So… what happens now? You take me to the  _ Steadfast _ ? To your fearless leader? Is Kylo Ren going to lob my head off with his saber?”

Hux looked disgusted, beside himself with sudden fury, and he rose to his feet to take a step toward her. Rose slanted her body back on the mattress, careful to keep her distance, but he stopped a few feet away, the blaster held relatively loose at his side. 

“No, not to  _ Kylo Ren _ ,” he snarled, barely managing to say the two words of that name without retching. “I have-... I have a proposition.”

Hux lowered the blaster then, crossing his arms over his front and clasping his free hand around the wrist holding the weapon. He studied her from his position over her, chin angled down, eyes narrowed. 

She could see how green his eyes were, this close, the color of seafoam and warm jade, with flecks of speckled gold. His lashes, pale and soft-looking, longer, prettier than hers, cast tiny shadows along the pale lilac circles beneath his eyes. He looked much more tired, much more stressed and worn, than the last time she’d seen him. 

She was reminded of what Finn had told her, that this man had been demoted. Val had told her he was distrusted by the new regime. She remembered her momentary blip of sympathy for him, and it came back now, flaring to life within her like the flame of a struck match. It would be so easy to snuff it out again. It all depended on how he’d behave. 

Reminded of the first time they’d met, on her knees before him, she examined the height difference between them then, the position of power and control he held over her, him standing, her seated on his bed, cuffed and vulnerable. 

Testing him, she pressed her palms to her thighs and pushed slowly, tentatively to her feet. 

He tensed but did not move, merely watched her through narrowed eyes. 

Rose considered this a victory. She smiled slightly.

“A proposition? Does this proposition of yours end with me walking out of here with my life and my dignity?”

Hux’s expression faltered, looking almost offended. “ _ Yes _ .”

Rose’s brows raised in shock. 

“Really…,” she murmured, head cocking to one side as she examined him for falsehood. “General Hux of the First Order is going to let a little rat go? After he went to such trouble to catch her?”

“Not without payment,” he amended quickly, expression masked and calm once more. “Hence the term  _ proposition _ .”

“I thought you didn’t pay women to-,”

“Just-!” he interrupted her, clenching his teeth, his free hand clenching so tightly the leather squeaked as if in discomfort. “Do you want to hear it or not?”

Rose smirked, the first real gesture bordering on any sort of positive feeling since she’d entered this room. 

“Fine. I’ll bite. What do you want?”

Hux looked like he hadn’t realized he would get this far. He floundered, his eyes suddenly two green pits of uncertainty, and he shifted on one foot, drawing himself up to full height, straight spine, planting his feet, as if finding a position of strength would feed him the courage needed to address her. It seemed to work, as he calmed and the wrinkles on his forehead smoothed, his mouth pressing in a flat line, jaw relaxed. 

“I would like to open a line of communication with the Resistance.”

Rose certainly had not heard that right. She laughed out loud. 

“What?” 

He scowled at her, over straightening his spine again with a deep inhale, exhaling loudly in a singular rush of breath. 

“I want to open a line of communication with the Resistance, with you. Feed you intel.”

Certainly this was a joke. A prank. A trick. Something. General Hux… telling her he wanted to feed her intel. First Order intel? Or did he want to teach her how to keep a straight face in sabacc? 

“You’re…,” Rose floundered for the words, studying his face intently, unable to keep herself from stepping a tad closer to look deep into his eyes. “You’re… serious? You want to turn on the First Order?”

When she put it like that, it suddenly didn’t sound like such a great plan. Hux felt the rich dinner he’d just consumed not even half an hour ago turn in his stomach, souring. He clenched his fists tightly as if he could control the feeling by sheer willpower alone. 

”Yes!” He confirmed, emphatic, a little breathless with the effort of having to convince her. He tried to make his words sincere, but he wasn’t very practiced at it. 

She did not hide her expression of surprise. It softened her face, her cheeks rounding with a slight, incredulous smile, and she laughed disbelievingly, shaking her head slowly. The little tendrils of hair framing her face shook with the gesture. 

“I-... well… wow...”

He waited for a more solid response from her, unwilling to share more than he needed to. He knew she would not accept without a further explanation, without some sort of proof.

She was as smart as she was resilient, as brilliant as she was brave, as strong as she was fierce. 

He’d been ruminating over the idea of selling intel to the Resistance for a while now, all part of his master plan to reclaim his control over the First Order and the galaxy, to hemorrhage the bleeding of this organization he’d dedicated his entire life to. But he hadn’t been sure  _ how _ . Until setting eyes on her at dinner. If the scavenger girl could beat Ren, if the Resistance ended up taking out Pryde, it would be no trouble to double-cross this new, fragile alliance and take his rightful place as Supreme Leader. 

Perhaps he could even forge a bond with this girl, earn her trust, and in that way begin to work the Resistance underneath his thumb. He’d have to be careful, seeing as it was  _ this  _ girl, Thornflower. She was cunning and brilliant, but now that he had her, no one else would do. 

Someone with a more vapid mind would let slip who her contact was, could misfeed data, could irritate him beyond his wits end when his tensions were already so high. No, he very much wanted his contact in the Resistance to be someone that he could respect, however begrudgingly. 

So far, that meant only her. 

“How do I know you are telling the truth?” Rose mumbled softly, examining him as if in a new light, with curiosity, with wonder. 

“You will when I let you walk out of here,” he uttered, a razor-thin edge of threat to his voice, as if this should be obvious and she should stop wasting his time. “With your life and your dignity, as you put it.”

He had a point, but that didn’t answer his motivations. This could be a trap, a trick. The Allegiant General could have put him up to this. 

“Why?” she asked, her tone harsh. “Why bother? What’s in this for you?”

“Vengeance,” Hux uttered coolly, his tone icy with fury. “Ren and Pryde are ruining the First Order. It is time I seek opportunities elsewhere.”

It was always important to give little hints of real truths when telling a lie. It made it seem that much more real, that much more potent and true. Hux was careful not to let the mask on his face slip, careful to remain as genuine and true as he could possibly seem. 

Rose studied him, skeptical, trying to get a solid read on his expression. But he wore that mask so well, his jaw strong, his eyes almost vacant, with just a hint of that fanatical mania that made him famously rabid for war. She did not feel like she could trust him, and she most certainly did not want to agree. 

She wanted to talk to someone else, someone higher up in command than her, someone with more experience. This felt way out of her league. Making a deal with  _ General Hux _ of the First Order? She had a sneaking suspicion that this decision, this moment, would be the most important decision she’d ever make in her life, one that could result in so many disastrous outcomes, could have so many horrible possibilities. 

It could end with her dead. 

Her head spun with the gravity of it all, the seriousness of it, and she staggered slightly, catching her weight on the bed behind her, propping her legs against it and folding her hands together in their cuffs. 

“Prove it to me,” she bit at him, snappy in her nervous, agitated state. “Tell me something the First Order would not want you to reveal.”

“Kylo Ren is seeking Rey, feverishly, all across the galaxy,” Hux uttered without hesitation. “He hopes to turn her… turn her to the  _ dark side _ .”

His lip curled with disgust as he referenced the Force, unable to keep his eyes from rolling slightly in his head, flexing his fingers on the forgotten blaster in his hand. 

Rose studied his expression, not having expected to hear this sort of thing. 

“Well… that seems a little obvious, he would-,”

“He is visiting Sith temples, old locations of power, and amassing some sort of … mumbo jumbo nonsense,” Hux explained impatiently, clearly seeming not to value nor respect the old Sith or Jedi religions. “His  _ Knights _ are with him, a rag-tag bunch of horribly vapid and simple creatures who care nothing for rules and order. They seek Rey, as well. They obey his every command.”

_ That  _ was something useful, something new, something Rose was sure the Resistance didn’t know; Rey didn’t know. Rose stared at him, in awe, suddenly itching to pick his brain, to press him.

So many questions about First Order technology flooded her mind, and she grinned, beside herself, and unconsciously she crept closer until there was only a foot of distance between them.

“The hyperspace tracking tech… the one on the Supremacy… how does that work? Can you tell-,”

Hux held up a gloved hand between them, not touching her mouth, but hovering there, and gave her a stern look, eyebrows knitting over his eyes. 

“Ah ah, you said prove it to you, and I have. I decide what intel to share.”

Rose frowned, extremely disappointed, and cocked a brow in frustration. He seemed almost to smile at her reaction, the corners of his eyes wrinkling, though his face remained mostly impassive. 

“Alright. Fine. I’ll do it.”

It was his turn to appear surprised, though it was a much more tailored reaction, tempered by resistance and reluctance to give her more than he needed to. 

“Good,” he commended on an exhaled sigh, fiddling with the cuff of his formal vest, straightening it and smoothing down the fabric. 

It did not escape him that she had only agreed after her excitement over First Order Tech. He studied her appraisingly, curious, but backed away from her and strolled toward his bag that rested on the side table. He rummaged within, retrieving two objects. 

The blaster resting lazily now in his hand, as if he no longer needed it. 

Rose wasn’t sure if he did or not. If he removed these cuffs, would she attack him? Instinct told her to… but wasn’t he an ally now?

He seemed to sense the tense truce between them, because he neither offered to remove the cuffs nor returned her blaster to her. Instead, he tossed the two new items down onto the mattress, keeping a safe distance from her.

Rose turned to examine them. One was a sleek black datapad, newer than any she’d ever seen, and the other a comms device, also new, smaller than the models the Resistance used, and with many more buttons on the side, with newer features. She could not wait, and immediately scooped the datapad up into her hand, tapping the screen awake and fumbling over the controls with a loose grin. 

Hux watched her silently for a moment as she rifled through the files, though there were only two. It was his personal property, and it annoyed him slightly to have to give it up, but he could easily obtain another. He’d wiped it as soon as he’d come back to the room while waiting for the matron of the teahouse to bring the girl to him. He kept meticulous backups of all of his files on a near religious basis. 

“I will send intel to this datapad,” he remarked as he watched her pick her way through strips of code, once again, impressed beyond his will. She worked with a speed and dexterity that would have appreciated on any engineering team within the Order. Pity.

“Installed is an encrypted chat function that scrambles the network every few minutes so that no one in the Order will be able to intercept our conversations. You must be careful to open and run this program every time before sending me any message.”

Rose rolled her eyes and gave him a scathing look. 

“I know how to run an encryption program. I’m an engineer, not an idiot.”

An engineer. Interesting. Hux stared at her, and Rose blinked up at him, having realized she’d revealed more of herself. 

She blushed with anger and looked away. 

“That explains your interest in our tech,” Hux remarked, almost conversationally. 

Rose lay the datapad down and reached for the comms device to change the subject. 

“What’s this for?”

“Comms device for audible conversation. Never open a conversation with me. I will always hail you first. This device is compatible with the ear piece you’re wearing in your ear, so you may have it on and no one in the Resistance will be the wiser. It will be the same for me on the  _ Steadfast _ .”

Rose glanced up at him, mildly alarmed. It hadn’t really sunk in, just yet, what they were doing, what  _ he _ was doing. This was dangerous for him, and talking of wearing an open comms unit in his ear while working with the cruel and pretentious Pryde, the force-wielding Kylo Ren? 

Was General Hux braver than she thought?

“You’re… you’re sure?” she questioned softly, studying his face for signs of weakness or trickery. “You really… I mean… this is what you want to do?”

Hux gave her an impatient glare. 

“What I wish to do is my business. You need only follow orders.”

Rose made a mocking laugh then. 

“Ehhh, no. I am not going to be ordered around by you. If anyone is giving orders, it’ll be me.”

His eyes narrowed dangerously, and he moved his left arm forward, pressing a fist against his chest, flashing her his General’s insignia, as if she’d respect and obey that. 

She studied him with awkward appraisal. 

“We’re equals, Hux, or nothing at all.”

He sneered at her, lowering his arm, but did not argue, instead clasped his hands behind his back, straightening up, looking every bit the pretentious General.

“If, as you so eloquently put it, I am to be equal with  _ vermin _ , it is only fair I know your name… your true name,” he uttered coldly. 

Rose bristled. She wouldn’t work with this infuriating man if he were to consistently continue to refer to her as vermin. But she was impatient to leave him, to get out of this horrible place, to meet back up with Val and Eko and get back to Ajan Kloss and Leia to give her a mission report.

So she made him an offer.

“And what of yours?” Rose demanded. “Equals. You tell me your name, I’ll tell you mine.”

The man bristled slightly, his brows raised with a look of incredulity. He studied her for a moment, as if considering whether or not he needed to tell her. It was common knowledge she could look up anywhere. She may as well hear it from him so he could assess her reaction, always cautious against being tooled with. 

“Armitage,” he said flatly, the three syllables rolling off his imperial accented tongue like smoke.

Rose’s brows raised in surprise and a smile pulled at the corner of her mouth. 

“Ar-... Armmmm… Army-tudge?” she tested the name on her tongue, her head tilting slightly to the side and eyes narrowing as if it tasted strange in her mouth. 

Hux bristled even more, cheeks flushing a soft red as his expression screwed up into furious indignation. He corrected her through clenched teeth.

“Arm-uh-tidge.”

“Armitage,” Rose repeated, correctly this time. For a moment she seemed almost proud of herself, but at one of his icy looks, she was reminded, and the smile faded off her face. 

“I’m Rose,” she uttered in a cool retort. “Rose Tico.”

A sudden look of recognition crossed his face, as if something had occurred to him.

“What?” she demanded. 

“Thornflower… a rose has thorns,” he murmured, as if he had finally found a piece of a puzzle he’d been seeking diligently. “It makes sense now.”

Rose laughed softly, a dry, sarcastic sound, but she did not tease him. She wondered if he’d been trying to puzzle out the meaning of her codename the entire time. 

“I’m going to have to tell the General,” Rose uttered, by way of hurrying the process along.

He sneered slightly, his nostrils going wide, offended that she’d so easily call the leader of their rag-tag bunch of  _ vermin _ a General, yet insist on referring to him without the respect due him in his position. 

“Yes, fine. But only her.”

Rose nodded her agreement, then paused, considering something. 

“I need something from you… proof for her, proof that you are who you say you are,” Rose mumbled quietly, racking her brain for something, anything, she could take from here to show to the General. 

“Proof? Why?”

“No one is going to believe me when I tell them that Armitage Hux wants to make a deal.”

He sighed and tucked the blaster carefully underneath his arm after flipping on the safety, knowing there was only one thing he could part with that would prove his identity he would not miss. He worked his fingertips against the end of his gloves, pulling them off slowly, one at a time, then pressed them neatly together and handed them over to her. 

“These will do, I have many pairs. They are emblazoned with the First Order insignia, and the tag within indicates my rank, the black and white stripes,” he explained dully, his tony overly dripping in formality, barely clipped and patient. 

Rose took them from him with one hand, both hands raising because of the cuffs. She smoothed her fingers over the leather, surprised they felt so soft without a hand inside of them. She studied them, looking within the cuff for the insignia as he’d said, satisfied when she discovered it to be there.

A small smile broke over her lips. She’d gone on a mission, her first successful one, hopefully, if she made it out of here, and she’d be going back not just with data, but also a First Order General. A General with all the knowledge they’d need concerning tech, First Order intel, and Kylo Ren’s movements; tied to her in common goal. 

The idea of it was crazy, causing Rose’s head to spin and her stomach to sink with sudden nausea. She tried to imagine Finn’s face when she told him, but she  _ couldn’t _ tell him, not really, not for this to work. The less people who knew about  _ the Resistance Spy _ , the better. Still, she liked to imagine it nonetheless. 

She was surprised when the binders fell open and off of her wrists with a hiss. They hit the ground with a loud clunk, and she looked up at Hux with a mildly vulnerable expression, clenching her fists tightly around the still warm leather gloves. 

They studied one another for a long moment, his face impassive but guarded, hers wrinkled with slight worry. 

But the truce lasted. Hux took the blaster in one hand and held it out to her carefully. 

Rose took it, watching him the entire time. When he made no sudden moves, she sighed and parted the robe at her hip to latch it back into place in it’s holster. 

The whole moment was so surreal, Rose felt she may be dreaming. 

“Here, for the items I’ve given you,” Hux mumbled, handing her the black leather satchel used to store his electronics in travel. Rose took it slowly, still feeling very much that dreamlike quality, that none of this was real, that she was sure she’d wake up any moment and find that Armitage Hux was still her enemy. 

Cause he wasn’t now… was he? She wanted him to be. She still hated him. She still wanted to smash that proud nose of his in with her elbow, and would do it if given the chance. 

But she didn’t  _ distrust _ him. He’d shown her that he could be civil, be more  _ human _ , at least. 

“Thank you,” she murmured, stuffing the items into the bag and slinging it over her shoulder. 

One last thing occurred to her as she held the strap in place on her arm. She looked up into his impassive face. 

“You’re not… there’s not a tracker in these items… is there? This isn’t just… a ruse to find out where our base is… is it?”

Hux smirked then, the expression cold. 

“I’m impressed,” he mumbled softly, head tilting a little high as if he were proud she’d think him that sneaky. “But no. My offer was genuine. You’ll have no way of knowing, of course. I understand if you do not trust me.”

Rose licked her rouged lips, disliking the feel of the lipstick against her flesh. If she was the one to lead the First Order to their door, it wouldn’t be a celebration of a successful mission, but a funeral of the last hope of the galaxy. 

“I don’t trust you,” Rose admitted honestly, but there was no judgement in her tone. 

Hux gave her an appraising look, as if he found this to be a wise decision. 

“Which is why I’m going to have my techs look this over before I leave Rubis. You won’t get the location of the Resistance Base, so don’t try.”

He actually chuckled softly. Though the sound was without mirth, it still surprised her, and he sighed heavily, shaking his head. 

“Be my guest. As I said, my offer was genuine.”

Rose exhaled heavily, nodding once, her gaze drifting over toward the exit, the paper door that lay between her and certain freedom. 

Hux took a step back, nodding toward the door, dismissing her as if she were one of his underlings. She scowled but hurried for the door, pausing with her hand on the control-pad that would open it at her touch. She looked back over her shoulder at him. 

“My code name is Thornflower,” she uttered to him. “And yours is Gingersnap.”

She pressed the keypad then, the paper door sliding open with a heavy shift of sound, and stepped out into the cool evening, hand firmly wrapped around the strap of the leather satchel. The paper door slid shut behind her, and she hurried away, leaving Hux to stammer in wonder at why she’d given him such a code name. 

Ginger was for his hair, and his volatile behavior. Snap was for the way he lost his temper and went all feral on people. It only seemed fitting, and it was cute, which Rose thought lessened some of his intimidating qualities. If she called him Gingersnap over the comms, she’d be able to distance herself from the man responsible for Starkiller and so many other horrors. 

Hux watched her go, struggling to control the emotions on his face. Disgust and fury, at her lack of respect for his dignified position by labeling him something so preposterous, and nausea at his decision to double-cross the Order, something he’d spent his entire life slaving to build and protect, warred within him. 

He wondered if he’d made the right call. He wondered if his plans would work. He wondered if he’d be able to put up with this insufferable, infuriating woman. 

Only time would tell… 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gingersnap and Thornflower begin their rendezvous as spy and handler.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to the BEST BETA IN THE WORLD, who is always so kind and sweet to edit my things: [ @ElfMaidenOfLight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElfMaidenOfLight/pseuds/ElfMaidenOfLight). She's also the namesake of Hux's spy codename: Gingersnap! And she helped me come up with Val Alcyon, my favorite little OC baby. Thanks!! 
> 
> Enjoy this new chapter update!

Rose could barely contain herself as she hurried down the outer corridor, facing straight forward to ignore the others in the hot spring. She did not want to see what horrors might reside there, having had quite enough power and control of the First Order for one night. Thankfully, she saw no one on her way to the front door, and was able to slip outside into the evening streets, hurrying past small gatherings of people enjoying food from street vendors and seated at drinking booths, laughing over shared cups of rice liquor. 

Dodging down the side alley behind the teahouse, Rose pressed herself into the shadows and flattened against a wall, trying her best to control her breathing, to get a grip on the pounding of her heart. 

She’d escaped, he’d allowed her to leave, he wasn’t going to do anything. She was alive! 

But she couldn’t shake the idea that he could be following her, or rather, as was more likely, sent one of his First Order goons to do so. 

She watched the entrance of the narrow alleyway, taking in the lights of the street and pretty red leaves of the trees swaying in the light breeze, the gentle chatter of citizens enjoying a night in the center of the busiest district. 

No one followed her into the alleyway. No one was watching. No one seemed to notice she was there. 

It didn’t fit with what she expected him to do. He’d given her an answer for his reasons to open communication with her: vengeance. Was that really all he wanted? 

If he was so obsessed with vengeance, why had he not punished her in some way, in retort for how she had humiliated him? Something didn’t add up, and she wished she knew him better, knew his deepest machinations and idiosyncrasies, because then she’d know what her next move should be. 

Did he really want to let her walk off this planet with these devices and wait for further contact? 

Who exactly was Armitage Hux?

She waited there a few moments in the dark of the alley. At some point, her comms unit kicked back on, managing to unscramble from the jammer in Hux’s room. 

All at once, a set of frantic, panicked voices kicked on in her ear, causing her to clap a hand over the side of her head and wince, letting out a slight groan as their shrill cries echoed painfully through her eardrum. 

“LIEUTENANT GENERAL, ARE YOU OKAY?!”

“ROSE… what the KRIFFING hell is going on?!”

Rose inhaled deeply and turned, staggering slightly down the alleyway, picking up her speed as she steadied, heading toward their rendezvous point. 

“I’m fine,” she insisted, hand still over her ear. “I’m fine, I’m fine! On my way to you now. I’ll tell you when I get there.”

Wasting no more time, Rose hurried down the dark alleyway, keeping the bag tucked over her shoulder, her palm on the weight of it at her thigh. Dodging down a separated, tunnel-like hallway that looped beneath a canopy of foliage and stone between the many teahouses of the area, she swung out into the side street and jogged down the cobbled stone path, stopping only once she’d reached the door to the small room they’d rented.

She peered up and down the street, almost expecting to see some black-clad First Order officer loom suddenly out of the darkness, but the street was empty. Satisfied, she slipped within the open archway and punched in the keypad at the control panel. The pneumatic doors slipped open quickly and she darted inside, inhaling a deep and steadying breath as Val and Eko rushed toward her across the tiny room. 

“What happened?”

“Were you followed?”

“What’s that bag?”

Rose ignored their questions and crossed the room, sinking into one of the puffy bantha leather armchairs, laying a hand over her eyes and releasing a small, soft groan. She was shaking with the after effects of adrenaline, a mixture of fear and excitement coursing through her veins. 

“I was… well, I was incapacitated. But they turned out to be an ally… sort of,” Rose explained wryly, her hand covering the bag now resting in her lap. 

“Was it one of the First Order guys?” Eko asked softly, her mind going immediately to the way they had both been treated at the dinner party. Her expression was soft with horror and worry, and both she and Val crowded Rose. Eko sat on the floor by her feet, Val pulled over a stool and seated himself on it. 

They both watched her, waiting for answers. 

“One of the First Order officers,” Rose admitted. “managed to get me in binders after luring me into his room.”

Eko swore loudly and Val’s face drained of all color. 

“So… is he dead now? How’d you escape?” Eko looked eager for details as to how Rose had done it. 

“Not dead, he-...” 

Rose trailed off, unsure of how much she should tell them, how much they should know. She didn’t feel comfortable telling them everything entirely, not until she was absolutely sure it was safe. 

“Here, there’s a datapad and a comms unit in this bag. Take them out and link them up with our holopad we brought. I need you to analyze them for tracking software, malware, anything harmful. Do it  _ now _ .”

She shoved the bag into Val’s hands, rising to her feet and heading toward the fresher, letting the pneumatic door slide shut behind her. 

She could hear them murmuring in the room beyond, the walls were so thin. But her hands were trembling and she needed a moment. She hurried to the sink and turned on the tap, cupping a small pool of cool water in her hands and leaning over to splash her face. She did this a few times, sighing into her palms, then reached for a cloth and rubbed the makeup out of her eyes and off of her lips. When she stood back up, she looked fresh faced and new, all but for the splotchy black bruise that had now taken up residence under her eye. 

It looked ghastly. She’d need to put some bacta on it as soon as possible. 

Feeling a bit more steady, Rose turned and rejoined her crew in the main room, freezing in the open doorway to find them both staring at her, their eyes wide with slight fear. 

Val had the datapad and comms unit Hux had given her plugged into the holopad. 

Eko was holding a pair of soft, First Order issue leather gloves. 

“The-... the General, ma’am?” Val asked softly, as if hesitant to verify this bit of horror. 

Rose strode forward and snatched the gloves out of Eko’s hands, perhaps a little too harshly. 

“Don’t say anything yet. Did you examine the items? Are they clean?”

Eko met Val’s gaze, something significant in the look, and Val nodded, unplugging both devices from the holopad, handing them up to her with the air of a child that had been scolded. 

“They’re clean, Lt-... Rose. Both of them. No issue.”

Rose took them from him, gentler this time, turning toward the large bed in the center of the room and sinking onto the end of the mattress. She suddenly felt very tired. 

Eko and Val were silent, watching her, wary. 

“I’m sorry for being so snippy,” Rose murmured, dissolving quite suddenly into tears. They poured down her cheeks, hot and sloppy, and she tossed the items onto the bed beside her, digging her palms into her eyes. She was so relieved to know that Hux had not lied to her. He wasn’t coming. He wasn’t following her. It hadn’t been a trick. 

Both Eko and Val stood, unsure of what to do, whether or not it would be appropriate to comfort her. Eko decided first, and rushed forward, kneeling before Rose and placing a hand on her knee. 

“Is everything alright? Did the General hurt you? What happened?”

Rose shook her head, overwhelmed with the past few hours events, having to swallow her emotions, the fear at the nearness of death, the shock at what Hux had wanted, the guilt and trepidation that she could have just walked the entire Resistance into a trap. 

Knowing that he had been telling the truth, that he was keeping his word, for now at least, had broken the dam. This was too much for one little flower to be feeling. 

“No, he didn’t-... didn’t hurt me, he- he … he…” Rose hiccuped softly, shaking her head and pressing her hands into the mattress around her, trying to get a handle on her feelings. 

Val rushed forward with a cloth, extending it out toward her, and Rose took it with a small thank you, pressing it to her eyes and wiping away her tears. This was embarrassing, to fall apart like this in front of them, but she had no control, her mind and body had been pushed to the limit, and the harder she tried to stop, the harder the tears fell. 

“He’s going to send us intel from in-inside the Fir-... First Order,” Rose managed to get out, the words somehow sending a thrill of calm through her. 

That’s right. If there was no tracking, no trick, then this was true… right? She’d done something good, something right. She was helping. 

Val looked wary, but nodded, pulling his rolly chair over toward the pair of them and seating at some distance, his elbows on his knees, hands folded together in a fist. 

“He’s going to spy?” he questioned, an eyebrow raised. “ _ The _ General Hux is turning against the Order?”

“Yes!” Rose uttered with a bright laugh. It sounded so ridiculous to hear it out loud.

Val was silent, his expression soft, looking almost lost. He pressed back into his chair with a sigh.

Eko stood and walked toward their little bundle of supplies, locating a canister of water and brought it over to Rose, popping the cap off and handing it over to her with a light smile. 

“Isn’t that good news? I mean… even if it’s Hux, having a spy that high up in the ranks of the First Order is a blessing in disguise.” 

Rose took the water, thanking her, and downed a long chug of the stuff, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. 

“Yeah, yeah, you’re right…” 

She met Val’s gaze, studying his expression for a very long moment. Only he, among the two of them, understood what Hux was really like; had worked under him. 

“Val-... do you think we can trust him?”

Val nodded immediately, rolling his shoulders back and straightening in his seat. 

“Yes, actually. Hux doesn’t mess around. He’s very honest and straightforward. If he has a plan, which he likely does, it is not to ambush or trick you, at least not now. The devices he gave you were clean. If he wants to feed you intel, he’s going to do it.”

Rose wanted to believe him, but somehow her mental image of General Armitage Hux didn’t match up with “honest and straightforward”.

“Even so, the intel he gives me could merely be what  _ he  _ wants to reveal and  _ when  _ he wants to reveal it, honest or not.”

“I suppose so.”

Rose didn’t feel loads better, but at least she had stopped crying. She finished the water Eko had given her, then handed the canister back to her outstretched palm. 

“But we’re safe to go back… I’ll debrief with Leia and figure out where to go from here.”

Both Val and Eko seemed to relax now that she was calm. Val even smiled slightly, the motion strange on his normally impassive face. 

Rose beamed back at him. 

“Kriff, thank the stars for both of you. I’m sorry for my outburst. That was… not very professional of me.”

“Shut up,” Eko muttered with a light laugh. “I’m surprised you weren’t already in a puddle of tears. That man scares the shit out of me.”

“He’s not really that scary…,” Val countered, always ready to contradict Eko and her negative opinions toward the Order. 

“He is, too! I saw him once, when he came to Tatooine with a group of troopers to handle some business in Mos Eisley. His eyes glowed like green fire, and his shadow is several feet longer than he is tall.”

“Mere wive’s tales!” Val scoffed. 

Rose turned from the pair of them, leaving them bickering in the background, and took the items Hux had given her in her hands, snatching her duffle bag and slipping back into the fresher to change. 

He’d been telling the truth, Rose thought to herself as she changed into her military fatigues, content to sleep on the transport out of this place. 

_ The Otomok system. That brings back memories. _

She still remembered his cocky, arrogant smirk as he said that to her, the cruel gleam in his eyes, the proud hunger in his face as he extended his hand and brushed his gloved finger against her jawline, held her there, so gently. 

She finished buttoning up her shirt and stared at the gloves lying harmlessly on the countertop. 

Her stomach turned over. Was she really going to do this? Trade war secrets? With  _ him? _

It was too good an offer to pass up. Rose plunged a hand into her neckline, fished out her pendant, trying not to remember that he was the only other human being aside from her or Paige that had touched it. She pressed a kiss to the cool metal. 

“Give me strength, Paige,” Rose mumbled softly. Then, sadly, “I miss you.”

Back in the teahouse, Armitage was unable to sleep. 

They were scheduled to return to the  _ Steadfast _ early the next morning, giving the officers a much needed night of rest. He would have gone to the baths, but they were full of other guests and he refused himself unless he would be free of prying eyes, which was likely to be never.

Instead, he stayed awake and tinkered with old strings of code on his second, much less than new, datapad. His newer one was gone, of course, into the hands of Thornflower. 

This older model was ancient; from his early days in the Order, having received it as a gift from Grand Admiral Sloane for making his first rank. He took it with him everywhere, unwilling to admit he did so out of sentiment, for it held some of his most early projects on it. He’d fool around with the data, swapping processes, editing code, until his eyes grew bleary enough that he’d drift into sleep. 

Tonight, laying stiff as a log on the top of his bed sheets and comforter, whenever he’d start to drift off, he would jolt awake again. Waiting beneath his eyelids in the dark was the image of her, on her knees before him, or prostrate on the floor, or cuffed and seated on his bed. Always with that fiery rage in her eyes. 

She was playing gatekeeper between his mind and rest, and unlike the puzzles of weaponry or technology that toyed with his mind, she had no immediate solution. No amount of tinkering could banish Miss Rose Tico away. She was haunting him. 

And he wasn’t even sure why. Residual regret, he figured, knowing that luring her into his room and telling her what he did had entirely sealed his fate. Unless he were to hire a bounty hunter or assassin and take her out, and within the next few hours before she returned to wherever the Resistance base was, it was done. 

Far beyond annoyed, Hux pushed himself to his feet, locking the datapad and securing it within his bag. He then slid the inner door that led to the garden and hot springs open with a manual flick of his wrist. 

Silence greeted him from within the garden. The fairy lights around the stone paths were dimmed. There was no sound except the bubbling water from the springs.

He was surprised and quite pleased, and examined the surface of the waters at a distance. It would be safe now that everyone had gone to bed to give it a try. He wasn’t one to typically enjoy luxury, but he wanted to be out of his room. He had just committed high treason with his enemy, and the room was suffocating with it. 

His stomach turned sour at the thought, but he forced it down. Retreating to the fresher, he showered off, as was the custom before using the hot springs, and wrapped his towel around his lean-cut hips. He tried not to linger too long on the image of his chest, pale-white and lean, marked with slight scars from years as his father’s son. If he allowed himself to dwell on it for too long, he would remember that he was weak. 

Instead, he rose to his full height and gathered his black pleated robe, pulling it on over his shoulders as if he were an emperor dressing for war, his cheekbones sharp against the dull light in the room from how tightly his jaw was clenched. 

He walked in slippers to the springs. He waited beside the bubbling waters, scanning his surroundings, carefully, looking for any miniscule movement. Pleased to find that he was alone, he disrobed, and folded the robe up as carefully as one could while hurrying to not be seen, laying it on one of the decorative rocks beside the steaming pool of water. He stepped into the pool, removed his towel in one quick motion, then sunk himself in the rest of the way, up to his chest in the hot water, careful to keep the towel from touching the rippling surface. 

He gasped with the sudden heat, panting out short, sharp breaths as his blood began to simmer slightly from the warmth. It was an all around good feeling, however, and he folded the towel and lay it on the side of the pool, then moved deeper into the center where he could stand up fully without being above the water, tall as he was. 

He’d always liked water. He figured it must have something to do with where he was born, though he knew little about that place and thought about it even less, having only visited briefly on and off throughout adulthood. Armitage did not dwell on mistakes nor failures, and his past was both of those things. But it was amusing to ponder, nonetheless, on this sleepless night beneath a billion stars. The sparkling lights above reflected in his soft green eyes as he looked up into the heavens and took in the stars. 

Beautiful, but chaotic. It all needed to be reined in. 

He thought of her, again, quite against his will. She slipped into his mind, a blip of feeling, and he began to ponder what she would say in response to his melancholic view of such a pretty sky. He’d like to know, if only to have some reason to put her down again, to tell her just how wrong she was about this galaxy they both inhabited. 

There would be time for that, he told himself. Time to pick her tech-obsessed brain, time to feed her tantalizing tidbits of knowledge and watch her scurry to lap them up, time to experiment on her emotion and feeling, to understand just what made her curious spirit tick. 

Armitage had always liked his new projects. 

Thinking of her as just another puzzle to solve was helping, and thinking of her at all was doing even more. If he could find something in this new arrangement to draw his intellect and interest, a way to spin this into a new project obsession, then he could forget he was committing treason. He could forget that he was now balanced so precariously upon the edge of a thin knife that one slip would sever his jugular. 

This was for the Galaxy, for the Order, for his ambition. It was necessary. 

Comforted by his own thoughts, Armitage drifted in the hot spring, his cheeks now quite red from the heat, and rested in the shallower waters, his arms propped along the sides of the pool, his cheek on his arm. 

The warmth felt amazing on his tired limbs, stretched from so much tension, cramped from so much stress. The water seemed to absorb his anxieties and pull them away, as if tugging a favored blanket from the arms of a toddler, only to replace it with something better, more comforting, more consoling. 

“Gingersnap…” he uttered out loud, sleepily, his tone mocking. “That foolish woman…”

And with his thoughts on what he’d like to tell her concerning his  _ codename _ , Armitage Hux, General in the First Order, drifted to a light and dreamless slumber there against the side of the pool. 

Rose never thought she would miss the heat and humidity of Ajan Kloss, but as she strolled down the off-ramp from their transport, she breathed in the sticky, jungle air and sighed in relief. The satchel Hux had given her was slung across her chest, and as she disembarked, she was followed by Eko and Val, who carted their crate of supplies between them, 

Everything here was as it had been: safe, secure, no First Order soldiers or sympathizers to be found, no ginger hair either. 

Something tingled within her at the thought, the reminder of him, and she brushed it away with irritation, striding through the soft earth and clumps of vegetation toward their office in the cave. Val and Eko followed without complaint, and upon arrival, set their crate of supplies down in their section, Eko more dropping it, Val much more careful. He threw the Twi’Lek a filthy look at her lack of care. 

“You two take a break. You’ve earned it. Go eat something, take a rest. Tomorrow morning we dissect the data, so be here bright and early, you understand?” Rose ordered them with a light smile. 

Val saluted her and gave her a thankful, relieved smile, and Eko just grinned and waved. 

“Thanks, Rose. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

She watched the two of them walk away together, surprised they did not go off in different directions. They didn’t seem to get along in the most intimate way, but perhaps that was changing. Perhaps they were bonding, being forced to work together. Rose thought that would be nice for them to have one another to lean on. 

She wished she had someone to lean on. Finn had given her that comms unit to contact him, but he was busy. He probably wouldn’t want to hear all about her personal problems. She couldn’t tell him about Hux, anyway. 

Right now, there was someone she could speak to, however, and she went straight for the commands post in the center of the cave. Leia wasn’t there, but she did find Commander D’Acy, leaning over the holotable and fiddling with some flight schematics, running test drills with flying formations of some sort. 

Rose cleared her throat, standing behind her, unwilling to interrupt her hard work. 

“Sorry, Commander but-... where is the General?” she asked softly. 

D’Acy straightened and turned to fix her softly stern gaze on Rose, her mouth pulling into a slightly wrinkled smile. 

“Rose, you’re back! Was the mission a success?”

Rose smiled widely. “Yeah! I mean-... well, overall… yes.” 

Her smile faltered somewhat, as did D’Acy’s at the oddity of her reaction. Rose pursed her lips together and scratched the back of her head. 

“Can you tell me where Leia is? I need to make my mission report.”

Was D’Acy eying her with suspicion? Or was she just paranoid? Rose felt the weight of the items Hux had given her against her thigh. She really needed to talk to Leia. 

“The General is meditating in her private quarters. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if you met her there,” D’Acy explained, gesturing off to a part deeper in the cave, a smaller section that one had to climb a slight outcropping of natural steps to get to, the place Leia had claimed for her bunking area. 

“Oh, great!” Rose exclaimed with relief. “Thanks so much.” 

She set off then, hurriedly, bustling past flight techs and a non-human mechanic that grunted at her as she almost toppled the pile of gears he was carrying. She uttered a rushed apology to him and continued on, trotting up the large stone slab steps and pausing as the General came into view. She was sitting on her bed, eyes closed, looking quite serene and peaceful. 

Rose wondered if she was trying to reach out to the Force. 

She took a deep breath, unsure if she should interrupt the General, but the woman turned suddenly, as if sensing she was there. She lay her warm brown eyes on Rose, her mouth pulling into a slight, sweet smile. 

“Rose. You’ve returned. How did it go?”

Rose rushed forward and seated herself in the chair left open in the corner by Leia’s bed, pulling the satchel off of her shoulder and laying it in her lap, pressing her lips thinly together. The General was holding a medallion of some kind; it looked old, slightly worn, and when Rose seated herself, the woman leaned and tucked it underneath her mattress, folding her hands over her lap and giving Rose her undivided attention. 

“Well, General… um… we got the data,” Rose began, starting with what she knew was actually good news. 

Leia smiled warmly. “Excellent. I knew I could count on you. Thank you, Rose.”

Rose blushed, beside herself, and grinned slightly, though it was a nervous one, and her fingers tapped staccato along the leather of the satchel, her stomach turning slightly with nerves. 

“Uh-... yeah, so… there was an issue, however.”

“Issue?” Somehow, Leia did not look nervous in the slightest. Instead she waited patiently for Rose to explain, her eyes narrowed in slight curiosity. “Go on.”

“General Hux was there,” the words tumbled quickly out of her mouth, as if she were a sinner at confessional, hurried and full of regret or shame. “He recognized me.”

Leia did not reply immediately, but her thin brows knit over her eyes; her expression was one of concern. She seemed almost as if she were listening to two different conversations at once, both Rose and someone else, some _ thing _ else. 

“You’re alive, though. Did he torture you? Torment you? Did he follow you back here?”

Rose winced slightly, that last one being her biggest fear. She shook her head emphatically. 

“No, ma’am, y’see… it’s the strangest thing. He-... he wants to… share intel with the Resistance. He’s-... he’s sort of designated me as his spy handler.”

Even saying it out loud, here to this woman whom she trusted with her life, it seemed ridiculous. How could any of this be true? She almost pulled out the datapad and punched a frantic message to him then and there, begging him to clarify, once more, that he really and truly wanted to do this. 

Leia did not seem shocked. Surprised, perhaps, but even that emotion did not register fully on her face. She did, however, seem concerned, and she shifted slightly on the bed, pulling one leg up onto the cot’s mattress, folding the foot beneath her other leg, her hands resting on her thighs. 

“Well-... that is a curious request,” she began, speaking carefully. “What did you say?”

“I-... I agreed,” Rose muttered softly, guilt and shame now rising within her. Had that been the wrong answer? “But I made sure to double check the items he gave. They aren’t embedded with a virus or any tracking device. He was telling me the truth, General, he really-,”

“Rose, wait!” the General interjected softly, her hands raised, her lips playing with a soft smile. “Do not misunderstand me. You did the right thing. I’m assuming he held you captive and probably gave you little choice.”

Rose nodded, swallowing her feelings, forcing herself to remain stern and professional. 

“He did. But I-.. if this is true, General, isn’t this a great thing for the Resistance?”

Leia nodded, seeming to chew over her thoughts, her gaze far away. 

“Yes. It is a great thing for the Resistance. Which begs to question, why does General Hux want to do it?”

Rose thought this was a good time to reveal the proof, so she plunged a hand into the satchel and pulled out the gloves, handing them over to Leia. The General took them with a gentle grip and examined them, noting the white and black stripes within the lining indicating to whom they belonged. 

“He gave me these so you would know the request was genuine,” Rose murmured. 

Leia nodded, then handed the gloves back to Rose. 

“How will he hand over this intel to you?”

“He’s given me a datapad and a comms unit,” Rose explained, tucking the gloves back into the satchel and pulling out the other items as she described them. “He- oh, hm.”

Rose broke off as she noted a tiny, blinking red light on the front of the datapad. She unlocked the screen and located the program, finding a message already waiting for her in one of the pre-loaded applications with scrambled encryptions. 

“What is it?” Leia asked her. Rose chewed her lip as she opened the screen, her stomach flipping with something like excitement or nerves; perhaps both. 

**Gingersnap:** Have you told your leader of my proposition? Reply when confirmed. 

Rose read the message aloud to Leia, who did look surprised then, her brows raised high on her forehead, a little chuckle leaving her lips. 

“He really wants to do this…,” she mumbled softly, looking delighted. “Do you feel up to handling him Rose? I know how you feel about the Order… will your personal feelings allow you to work with the man responsible for so much carnage?”

Rose clenched her teeth, trying not to remember his voice, his words, the stuff that haunted her nightmares. Instead she remembered how flustered he’d been when she’d served his words right back at him, the look of agony and shame as she’d bit down on his hand. 

“I can handle him. He doesn’t scare me,” Rose assured. 

“You will need to be diligent and careful,” Leia advised her. “Hux is a cunning man. He likely has ulterior motives up his sleeve. But, we would be fools not to take his offer.”

“Yes, General, I agree,” Rose nodded astutely, her expression serious. 

Leia smiled softly at her ardor. 

“I want full reports on all your dealings with General Hux. We can meet weekly, just you and I, and as needed based on the intel he gives you.”

Rose nodded in agreement, her heart fluttering in her chest. Now that Leia knew, and approved, she could allow herself to feel more excited about this assignment. It was Hux, which was gross, but it was  _ Hux _ , the genius behind so many of the First Order’s inventions, and she absolutely could not wait to pick his brain and steal his secrets, regardless of how gross he was as an individual. 

Her fingers itched to tap a reply to him, but she would not do so until Leia had ended their meeting with an affirmative. 

“I will report everything in full, General. I promise,” Rose agreed. 

Leia smiled warmly. 

“Thank you, Rose, for all your hard work and sacrifice. You are doing us a wonderful service.”

Rose blushed, grinning widely, and shook her head. 

“Oh-... no, thank you! It’s all just… whatever I can do to help. Paige would have wanted me to, so-,” Rose trailed off, not having meant to bring up her sister. 

But Leia smiled sadly, and reached across the distance between them, placing a hand on Rose’s in a loving gesture. 

“Paige would be  _ so _ proud of you, Rose.”

Rose’s eyes began to glimmer with tears. She grit her teeth, fighting them back, but gave Leia a warm and grateful smile. The General understood loss. She’d lost so many of her own loved ones to the beast that was the Empire, and now the First Order, most recently the love of her life. Rose couldn’t even imagine the burden of such a loss. 

“Thank you, General,” she muttered, her heart full and content. “I’d better go answer him before he changes his mind.”

“Good idea,” Leia agreed. “We’ll talk soon. Don’t keep the general waiting”

The planet was dark and dim, evening falling. The sounds of creatures and critters echoed from within the jungle around base as Rose made her way to the barracks within the caves. They had been carved out long before, when this planet had been planned as a Rebel base. The hallways of the caves were damp but blessedly cool, thanks to underground streams of water nearby. It acted sort of like a natural air conditioning system. Rose wiped sweat off her brow as she slipped into her bunk room, slamming the manual door closed to jam it into place, as it was old and would often slip open unwillingly. 

The room was small, dingy, poorly lit only by one singular yellow bulb connected to strings of rigged lights in the cavernous hallways, but it was a safe place to sleep; cool and private. 

Rose collapsed onto her bunk bed and rolled onto her back, the datapad Hux had given her in her hands, the satchel with the comms unit and the gloves laying on the floor beside the cot. She thought a long moment about his message, realizing he’d sent it a few hours prior, then typed out her reply, her tongue between her teeth. 

**Thornflower:** I have. The leader accepts. Spill your secrets. 

She debated whether or not to add the last part, unsure if she should stay professional or be herself, but decided at the end of it all that it didn’t really matter. General Hux was millions of miles away and could not hurt her. If he got annoyed with her personality, he could lick his wounds by himself. She was safe from him. 

The reply pinged in almost immediately. 

**Gingersnap:** Soon. Comms in ten minutes. Prepare.

Rose read it again, not liking the face that she could not see his face or hear his tone of voice. 

This message could be read either as insanely professional or deeply annoyed, or even supremely angry. All three were fitting of what she knew of Hux’s character. And it bothered her that he would just assume she would be able to accept his comms. As if he knew that the information he was selling her was so vastly important that she would drop everything and come running the moment he mentioned he had any intel. 

**Thornflower:** Are you going to give me intel? Cause if not, I’m going to sleep. 

The cursor where his reply would type blinked at her. She knew he had the communication application open, he was just choosing to ignore her. 

**Thornflower:** Are you going to tell me about your tracking systems?

His reply typed out quickly, almost aggressively.

**Gingersnap:** Comms in five.

Rose rolled her eyes. He had serious control issues. She lay the datapad down on her bed and got to her feet, stretching slightly with a soft groan, then moved toward her lopsided cabinet and pulled out her sleep shirt, a long-sleeved black tunic that was ultra soft to the touch but had a hold burned within it, here and there.

She’d salvaged it off of a wrecked speeder, found it in a deceased storm trooper’s belongings. She’d said a small, mental prayer for him as she took it, knowing that war was a terrible beast, even concerning kind-hearted people like her. 

She changed, pulled her hair down out of her buns, and slung her uniform over the rickety table in the corner that served as a desk, not folding it, but not crumpling it either. She had just sunk down between the rough, military grade sheets and common blanket when the comms kicked on in her bag. General Hux’s voice rang soft and clear into her room, muffled by the soft cloth of the bag. 

“Thornflower, come in. This is Gingersnap. Do you copy?”

She laughed out loud, unable to help herself, hearing him using their codenames, especially his, in such a serious voice. That had been a great decision on her part. She rummaged in the bag, still snickering, and when she’d found the comms device, pressed the speak button just at the tail end of her laughter. 

“Hah-.. copy. I’m here,” she answered him, attempting to be stern. 

She could almost hear his sneer on the other end of the line. 

“What is the matter with you?” he muttered through tense lips. 

Rose flopped back down on the mattress, staring at the rock formations on the ceiling, clenching the comms device in a fist against her chest. 

“Just enjoying myself, H-... Gingersnap. You should try it sometime.”

Silence over the line. She raised a brow, wondering if she’d broken him. But he spoke. 

“I would like a report on what your leader said concerning our arrangement.”

Rose made an ugly face, pressing the button on the side of the comms unit a little too hard. 

“ _ You _ would like a report? I don’t report to you. You report to me. I’m  _ your _ handler.”

“I have nothing yet to report. What I need is the word from your leader.” he sneered at her, his voice clear with contempt. 

“You could report your tracking intel to me,” Rose murmured softly, distractedly. She would almost kill to get her hands on that data. 

There was a pause on the other end of the line, then a slight breathing sound, very much almost like a laugh. Rose raised a brow. 

“Of course you would,” he replied in a delicate voice. “In good time, perhaps as a reward, I will tell you.”

Rose’s stomach lurched. “A reward? What does that mean?”

“Nevermind that. Tell me how your leader responded.”

“She said ‘yes’, which I told you on the datapad. You did not need to-,”

“I needed to hear it,” Hux interjected coolly. 

Rose frowned, sitting up slowly on the bed, trying to imagine his face, his expression, where he was. She could hear slight sounds in the background, the hum of a ship, the strange tinkling of a glass. 

“Where are you?” she questioned before thinking. 

He seemed taken aback by the question and paused; she could hear him take a drink of something. 

“In my quarters on the  _ Steadfast _ . Where else would I be?”

Of course he’d be in private quarters, where else would be safe enough to speak to his Resistance-based contact. She tried to imagine how Hux lived, coming up with a generic First Order styled room with lots of black and no sense of style. Somehow that did not seem to fit him, but she could think of nothing else. 

“Is it safe to speak to me there?”

“Yes, the only truly safe location. I use jammers in my room here, as well. The only comms in or out are by my command.”

“That seems stressful,” Rose mumbled. She’d never be able to live that way; live that paranoid. 

“Yes, it is,” he replied, his tone curiously soft, yet still meticulate in his pronunciation. “Well, I have my confirmation. You may return to sleep or whatever it is you are doing. I will contact you further tomorrow.”

Rose thought it strange, that he’d prepare her before signing off. It didn’t seem to fit with his character. He’d be the sort of person to just cut you off and leave you hanging without a warning or so much as a goodbye. He kept finding little ways to surprise her. 

“With intel, this time,” Rose mumbled grumpily, then added “please.”

“We’ll see,” he retorted smoothly. “Signing off.” 

The line went dead with static. Rose held the comms unit in her hand a moment longer, studying the ceiling, then clicked it off and tucked it beneath her pillow. 

As she drifted in and out of sleep, the memory of him stating clearly, proudly, the most confident man in the world, his codename “Gingersnap”, danced in her mind. It replayed in her brain, and Rose burst into soft giggles of laughter, pressing her face into the pillow to conceal the noise. 

He may have the upper hand with all the intel he held over her, but she’d certainly one-upped him at least in part, and she was loving it. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose and Hux share a comms call while fulfilling their respective duties on opposite sides of the war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have quarantine brain and forgot that it's Friday! But it's still Friday! :D So here's your update! Sorry I almost missed it. 
> 
> Thank you to the BEST BETA IN THE WORLD, who is always so kind and sweet to edit my things: [ @ElfMaidenOfLight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElfMaidenOfLight/pseuds/ElfMaidenOfLight). I couldn't do it without you!

Rose awoke the next morning to the pitch black of her room. Normally, the lights would stay on through the evening, as the caves were utterly black without them. She’d been rendered blind as she rooted around for her clothing. Rose ended up turning on the screen of the datapad Hux had given her, using it to bump around in the dark as she grabbed the items she needed to prepare for the day. 

It was still dark outside by the time Rose made it out of the caves with her clean clothes in hand, dressed in her sleep shirt and the pants from yesterday’s uniform. Yawning sleepily, she joined some of the other early-rising women in the communal fresher, an actual water shower that was connected to some of the planet’s extensive underground springs.

Rose bathed herself in the cold water, trying not to swear too much, shivering beneath the stream. When she finished, she combed through her wet hair and knotted it into two buns, dressed herself, then stomped back to her room to drop off her kit and clothing. She snatched up the datapad and the comms link, disguising the second object among the pockets for her code cylinders in the sleeve of her shirt. 

Swinging past the open-air canteen that had been rigged under a large tarp, she grabbed a mug of caf and a bowl of hot breakfast gruel, then made her way back to the office, intent on getting cracking at the data they’d robbed from the First Order. 

Neither Eko nor Val were there yet, but Rose didn’t blame them, as they were not required until sunrise, and the stars were still visible in the dark blue of the sky. 

It was hard to see in the cave, the light from the planet's two moons cutting through the various holes in the roof of the cave that led to vegetation on the mountain above. Rose had difficulty locating her necessary tools, and when she finally did so, she tried booting up the holopad but nothing happened. 

It wasn’t just the lights; it was the power. The whole base. 

Rose grumbled a slight stream of obscenities under her breath and drank a long chug of her caf, gasping in pain when it scalded her throat. She swore out loud then, as Kaydel Connix approached her in the dark, her eyes shining with reflected moonlight.

“Everything alright, Rose?”

Rose laughed and set her caf down on the table, pressing a hand to her forehead, her tongue stinging. 

“Just burned my tongue. What’s up with the power?”

“The fuel cells are out on the  _ Tantive IV _ ,” Kaydel began to explain, looking like she hadn’t slept a wink all night. Her hair was flying out of it’s typical braided style. 

Rose felt sympathy for her. 

“Why didn’t you wake me? I can help with this sort of thing.”

“Well, you’d been on that mission and you just got back,” Kaydel frowned, shrugging slightly under her forest green poncho. “I wanted to let you sleep. But I saw you were up. Can I get your help?”

“Sure!” Rose agreed happily. She couldn’t get any work done until the power was back on anyway, and she loved working with machinery. “Lemme finish my breakfast and I’ll meet you over there.”

Kaydel smiled gratefully. “ _ Thank _ you, Rose. You’re a blessing. By the way, you’ll need a pair of gloves. Don’t you have any?”

Rose looked up from her gruel, spoon half hanging out of her mouth. She hadn’t been issued a pair of gloves since awaking after Crait, but... she did have a pair of gloves back in her room. They’d probably be too large for her, but as a set of work gloves, it didn’t matter. She could modify them anyway. 

“I do. I’ll bring them,” Rose assured her with a nod. 

Kaydel gave her one last smile and a small wave before jotting off deeper within the cave. Rose hurriedly washed her breakfast down, chugged the last of her caf, then set off for her room with the dishes. She had to get the datapad out again, using it to bumble down the hallway, but she deposited the dishes within her room, a bad habit of hers, and snatched Hux’s gloves from their place on the floor beside her bed. 

She slipped them on without a second thought, flexing her fingers into the cool, soft leather. The fingertips were too long for her fingers, but the wrist cuff had a second, smaller loop and button which fit her wrist nice enough to keep them on. They would do well for now in protecting her hands from gears and machinery. She would alter them later. 

She turned to make her way back outside, raising one gloved hand to wipe a dollop of sweat, from the humidity from the top of her lip. 

A whiff of something familiar overcame her: leather and amber and crisp, spicy florals, an all too familiar scent, one that brought back unpleasant memories of the glove’s former owner. Rose froze in the doorway of her room, pressing the datapad to her heavily beating heart feeling very much like Hux was near; far too near her in the dark. 

She couldn't wear these…

But if she did, they might get ruined. How much fun would it be to tell him that his gloves had gotten shredded in the belly of a Resistance spacecraft? 

_ Sorry, Gingersnap… _

It helped to think of him that way, as Gingersnap. Her heart began to lighten as she imagined his outrage and she reached for the datapad but paused, her stomach turning to find the little red notification light now blinking in the darkness. 

She opened it, wincing at the sudden blare of light, and read the message. 

**Gingersnap:** Comms call hailing at 0500.

Rose’s eyes widened. He’d sent this message three hours ago. She only had one hour left until his comms call would come in. Based on the time between his last message and this new one, she could tell he’d barely gotten any sleep. Rose might have felt bad for him (she loved her sleep) if she wasn’t so annoyed at his demanding her be available whenever he wanted. 

**Thornflower:** I’m busy. Urgent business. Reschedule. 

She replied to him in haste, leading herself through the tunnels by the datapads light, tempted to leave it behind in her room so she could ignore him. As she came out of the barracks area and into the main cave, the datapad flashed bright red again. Rose almost ignored it, but the idea that he could have curious intel was too much to ignore. 

**Gingersnap:** Wear your comms earpiece. I will speak, you listen.

It hadn’t even been a standard day and Rose already wanted to kill him. She rolled her eyes, straining not to smash the datapad on the rocks then and there, and went back to her workstation to grab her earpiece. She took a few moments to link it to her comms device, then slipped it into her ear. 

**Thornflower:** Done, you menace. You happy now?

Not waiting for his reply, Rose tucked the datapad in one of her back pockets where it stuck out slightly, rolled up her sleeves to her elbows, and set off for the  _ Tantive IV _ . 

The ship was long and oddly shaped, an Alderaanian diplomatic cruiser belonging to Leia Organa, manufactured on Corellia, with a class-2 level hyperdrive. The Resistance had rigged the ship to help power the base, using its massive fuel cells by splitting its components and diverting the power. It was meant to be a temporary patch until the planet’s massive water supplies could be harnessed for energy instead. 

Kaydel explained all of this as Rose examined the ship from below, pulling open panels and tugging on gears and manually flipping a few switches, eager to suss out the problem.

“And she’s not out of fuel?” Rose verified once more, politely. 

Kaydel nodded. “She got a refuel yesterday when the supply scouts came back from their mission.”

Rose made a thoughtful sound of curious wonder, slapping a gloved palm on the side of the ship. A light cloud of fungal dust arose when she did so, and she coughed and waved her free hand away with a laugh. 

“I’ll need an emergency lantern for light, but I’ll figure her out for you.”

Kaydel looked relieved, and hurried off to find what Rose needed. 

Almost a full hour later, Rose was deep in the belly of the mechanical beast, wedged up on her ass upon a ledge underneath the bottom of the ship between two large fuel cells, oil and grease smeared upon her cheeks, a sonic screwdriver between her teeth, and one of Hux’s gloves in her lap. She’d had to remove it to tighten one of the bolts manually by hand, as it had proved stubborn, but she’d found the issue easily and was already working to remedy it. 

As she slipped the glove back on, trying not to drool around the tool in her mouth, the comms device in her ear buzzed with static. She almost fell out of her precarious position, crying out softly around the item in her mouth, and steadied herself with a gloved palm upon a fuel cell. 

“Thornflower, do you copy.”

It was not a question. He sounded extremely annoyed. Rose removed the tool from between her teeth and held it up toward one of the other nuts and bolts, removing it quickly and with ease. 

“I copy, Ginger.”

He was silent on the other end of the line, then made a slight scoffing sound. 

“That is not my codename. If you would kindly put Thornflower on the-,”

“Kriff, okay! Gingernsap. I copy  _ Gingersnap _ .”

Rose rolled her eyes as he made a curt sound of pleasured contentment, pleased that she was following the rules. This guy was way too uptight. 

“It’s just… you called at a really bad time. I’m kinda busy.”

“What are you doing?” 

He actually sounded… curious, which made Rose curious too. She frowned deeply, wiggling the bolt off to check the string of wires connecting to the fuse board beneath the panel she’d just removed. These too were damaged. 

“I’m-... guts deep in a ship,” Rose growled impatiently, ripping the fuse board and wires out of their spot, popping the connectors out one by one. “Trying to make her power up again.”

“Rose?” came a voice from the ground below. 

Rose glanced down in the gray, morning light to find Kaydel standing on the ground beneath her, glancing up into the belly of the ship with narrowed, squinting eyes. 

“Who are you talking to?” Kaydel questioned softly. 

On the other end of the comms line, Hux made a sound of amusement: not quite a laugh;more like a breath that sounded snarky and dark. 

“Myself,” Rose lied, her tone rotten with contempt for the man on the other end of the line. 

“Who is that? Do they rank above or below you?” Hux demanded.

“Shut-up,” Rose grumbled low, hoping only Hux could hear her. “You’re supposed to give  _ me _ intel, not the other way around.”

“Did you discover the problem with the fuel cells?” Kaydel called up to her, waiting expectantly for news. 

“Yeah! It’s this jungle humidity. It’s started to rot all the cables up under here. I’m replacing them all but we’ll need to figure out a way to prevent moisture from seeping in.”

Kaydel made a sound of regret and disappointment. That would be an expensive repair. She thanked Rose, however, and walked away from the woman, none the wiser about Rose’s secret conversation partner. 

“On a jungle planet…?” Hux was murmuring to himself in the background, as if cataloging it for later. 

“Okay, listen here, you-,” Rose snapped, slamming her screwdriver into the panel screws and clenching her teeth as she worked it inward. “Hurry up and tell me what you were gonna tell me. Neither of us have time for this.”

“We need to meet,” Hux explained without hesitation. “I will not deliver crucial intel over the system.”

Rose paused in the middle of her work, her heart leaping into her throat. They’d need… to meet? If he was going to give her intel worthy enough, she’d do it, but she hadn’t entirely thought of doing such a thing like actually  _ seeing him again  _ when agreeing to be his handler. She breathed out an irritated sigh and resumed her work, distractedly lashing out with a barbed question.

“And you couldn’t tell me this through the datapad because…?”

“I thought you were smarter than that. Anyone could be typing on the datapad. You could walk into a trap.”

Rose paused, her limbs and hands growing still, as his words sank in. That was… true and quite thoughtful of him. 

“I haven’t exactly been trained in espionage, y’know. I just got… thrown into this.”

“Perhaps your superiors saw promise and thought it fitting. Pity the Resistance never does anything correctly, including their training.”

Unsure if she should take that as a compliment or not, Rose felt her cheeks warm up against her will and tightened a few more bolts back into place, feeling her legs grow numb from propping herself up under the ship. 

“Fine,” she grumbled. “Where do you propose we have this meeting?”

Hux paused this time, hesitation evident in the way he breathed. He sounded tired, his words less pompous and proud than normal, lacking their typical umph. 

“Arkanis,” he uttered quietly, trying to sound nonchalant. “It’s the only place that won’t rouse suspicion in the First Order.”

“Why is that?” 

“There’s no First Order presence on Arkanis, neither bases nor facilities. It’s clean.”

Hux cleared his throat, seeming to force himself to sound normal, something she might not have caught during an in-person conversation. But with his voice so close to the comms, she heard the catch, the extra swallow around the lump in his throat. Rose pursed her lips and crossed her brows. 

“There’s plenty of places like that. Why this one, in particular? Who knows what this planet is even like?”

“I do,” Hux interjected, his tone just a hair more tremulous than normal. “I was born there.”

Rose almost,  _ almost _ dropped her screwdriver, but caught it in time, wiping a bit of sweat from her brow with the back of his glove,  _ his glove _ , her head spinning slightly in the increasing heat of the day coupled with the humidity building in the small space beneath the ship. 

“You were… you were born there? It was your home?” 

That would make sense why he wouldn’t be suspected of foul play, meeting her there. Perhaps he even had family on the planet; distant relatives. 

“I don’t want to meet anymore Hux’s,” Rose uttered before he could respond. “Just saying that now.”

Silence on the other end of the line. Dead silence, not even breathing. Then finally…

“You won’t.”

The words were stone cold and rock hard coming out of his mouth, their effect sinking heavily into Rose’s stomach with guilt. It was easy to tell he did not have a great relationship with his family, simply from the fury rolling off of those two simple words. Rose chewed on her lip, having finished replacing all the fuse panels and wiring. She needed to hop down and kick the engine on to see if the fuel cells would fire up. 

“Okay… so, how do I get there? When? What time? Do you have details?”

“I will send them over the datapad. I need to go, for now.”

Rose frowned slightly, hearing him shuffling about, and in the background, she almost missed it, a tiny squeaking sound that almost sounded like a-

“Is that a cat?” Rose blurted, just as he opened his mouth to sign off. 

“Millicent, no!” Hux uttered sternly, and there was the sound of something brushing against the comms mic, and very loud purring. 

Rose’s cheeks turned pink, eyes widening with longing. She loved animals and was already trying to imagine what this one looked like. Though it seemed highly strange for someone like Armitage Hux to own a cat and keep it with him on a Star Destroyer. 

“Her name’s Millicent?” Rose murmured softly, hearing Hux sneer in the background. 

“Goodbye, Thornflower. Signing off,” he uttered rapidly, between clenched teeth, and the line went to static. 

General Hux had a cat. Her name was Millicent. He wasn’t… mean to her, stern, yes, but… almost kind. 

Rose was relatively floored. She did not expect that out of him. 

“Rose! You done yet?” Kaydel shouted up at her. 

Rose ducked her head down as far as she could to peer out from under the ship and shouted back,“Yeah! Down in a sec!”

She finished up, replacing the paneling and tucked the screwdriver in her back pocket. She lowered herself down as far as she could before dropping to her feet in the dirt and catching her balance with one hand up on the ground. 

“Fire her up!” Kaydel shouted to someone in the cockpit. The ship’s engine roared to life and the power all around the base kicked on, flooding the cave instantly with light. Rose grinned and high fived Kaydel, looping her arm around her neck and pulling the girl into a hug, both of them happy and satisfied with a job well-done. 

“Great work, Rose. Thanks for your help.”

“Anytime!”

By the time Rose made it back to her corner of the cave, Val and Eko were awake, both of them nursing steaming mugs of caf. Eko was staring blearily into nowhere while Val, recognizing that the power had come back on, was booting up their holopads, working the technological equipment into submission. Rose approached them both with a cheerful expression, feeling a sense of pride and accomplishment at being able to get something important done so early in the day. 

“Hey, you two!” 

Val looked up from the control pad, giving her a half smile. Eko didn’t budge. 

“Good morning, Rose,” Val replied softly, his voice gruff from a long night’s sleep. 

“You two, okay?” Rose questioned. 

Eko shook her head. 

“Think I’m lagging from space travel,” she complained, rubbing the back of her neck, shifting one of her lekku out of the way as she did so. “I just… couldn’t seem to fall asleep.”

Val nodded with a sympathetic frown, pulling out the data chip Eko had managed to insert into the First Order’s holotable. Rose eyed it longingly, a swell of pride rising in her chest as he plugged it in to their holotable. The data came up immediately, a swirl of folders rotating slowly over the table, casting a halo of bright blue light around them. 

“Well, give a moment for the caf to kick in. Val, you start downloading the data to our own servers. I’m going to wash my face and get another cup of caf. When I get back here, we’ll get started!”

Orders given, Rose separated from them and went to clean the oil from her cheeks. She noted, as she rested her gloves on the counter in the common fresher, that the gloves seemed to hold up well under duress and work she’d put them through. They didn’t seem too dirty, either, and she began to wonder just what sort of leather they were made from. 

Too bad she couldn’t rub it in Hux’s face. That would have to wait. 

With a fresh cup of caf, Rose rejoined her crew and they settled down into their work. 

The data they had robbed from the First Order was extensive, as many files had been available to steal other than just the weapons plans, which Rose found curious. The additional files were unnamed, but when opened, listed strings of numbers with no descriptive data attached. Hundreds of sets of numbers were available, but nothing more. In similar “blank” folders with no descriptions, they found blueprint charts with absolutely no data on them, except for a small box that read the “to scale” options if the item on the chart were to be built. Some of the items were massive and made Rose feel uneasy. 

They were massive enough to be on a Star Destroyer. 

She had Val copy all of those strange files over onto her personal datapad, the one that Hux had given her. She would look over them later, personally, to see if she could determine their true value. It was possible they were just heavily encrypted with some sort of code, or perhaps they’d need another piece to see them. 

Hux could give her that piece. 

Which meant she’d have to play nice with him. 

Rose rolled her eyes at the thought, tucking the datapad back into her pants pocket. 

“So… what data  _ can _ we see?” Rose asked, peering over Val’s shoulder. 

Eko did not crowd him, but sat a distance away, sipping her coffee, ready to work when ordered to. Her skill sets did not include much practice with computers, but rather with understanding complicated machinery. She would come in useful later, once they had data to unfold and rip apart; blueprints and schematics to examine. 

“Well, the ones they were showing to the men at the party are password-protected, but I’m pretty sure I can hack it,” Val explained, his mouth screwed up in a determined look. “Knowing the back doors and all.”

Rose put a hand down on his shoulder and squeezed him there, making him jump. She moved it quickly and brushed his shoulder as if clearing it of dust. 

“Sorry,” she murmured softly. “Don’t… like personal touch? I won’t do it again.”

“It’s… no,” Val was blushing slightly, redirecting his attention back to the holopad, typing away. “First Order superiors never touched their subordinates.”

“Except for your Muchaka guy,” Eko teased, pink tongue between her teeth. 

Val turned on her, incensed, his face breaking into a scowling snarl. “Mi-ta-ka. And stop kriffing bringing him up!”

“Hey, hey!” Rose cried out, attempting to keep the peace. “Let’s try to remember we’ve got a job to do, hm?”

Eko snorted loudly and took a long sip of her caf, looking at Val as if he were something a cat had dragged in.

Val opened his mouth to growl something at her, but Rose stood between them, attempting to keep her spirit light and jovial.

Was this what motherhood felt like? Rose wondered to herself. She found it tiresome and exhausting, always having to step between the two. 

“You got anything pulled up yet, Val?”

He nodded, keeping his stern expression focused on the console. The blue light files shifted form as one of them “cracked” open from his hacking, and the TIE fighter Rose had seen during the First Order dinner shone before them in flickering blue light. 

“Good job!” Rose exclaimed happily, rushing forward and crouching onto the crate next to him. 

His cheekbones turned pink from her praise. 

“Oh, yeah. Good job, Val!” Eko even uttered as she stood and crept closer, standing behind them both to see. 

His face turned red. 

Rose moved his hand aside with a light brush and took over the controls, zooming in on the TIE’s engine. 

“Ohhhhh boy, these puppies are faster than ever,” Rose murmured, fiddling with the schematics. A string of numerical data popped up in the corner as the engine rotated and hovered before her. 

“Oh, Rose,” Eko noted with a soft cry. “Look at the hyperdrive schematics.”

Rose did as asked, shifting from the engine to the hyperdrive system.

“Stealth and hyperdrive enhancements both.”

“Stealth?” Rose mumbled softly. “These things scream, how is that stealthy?”

“It’s a TIE Whisper. I heard rumors of one of these being engineered, but I never got my hands on the data.” Val explained, his voice slightly in awe. “You can hardly hear it in deep space.”

“Well, now we know,” Rose grit her teeth, feeling determined and warm to know that something she and her team had discovered would help their pilots on the battlefield. “We have the advantage. We can develop something, one-up them, maybe a targeting system.”

Both Val and Eko nodded, seeming to feel the same buzzing excitement that Rose herself felt. 

“We did it. We’re… we’re really fighting back,” Rose whispered, flicking from the image of the TIE fighter to blasters, to upgraded ventral cannons, to storm trooper armor. She pressed her gloved palm against her chest, feeling the imprint of her pendant and the solid, warm beat of her heart. 

She was fighting back. 

_ It’s all for you, Paige  _ she thought to herself with a warm smile.  _ All for you.  _

“Alright. Everybody pick an item, Eko you get the TIE Whisper, and then it’s solo work time. I want a full data schematic on all changes to First order weaponry. We gotta build a working database to spring off of with our own inventions. Got it?”

“Yes, ma’am!” both of her underlings said in tandem. 

Rose grinned and watched them spring into action. Winning this little moment felt so good, nothing could ruin her mood. 

Hux strolled down a long hallway on board the  _ Steadfast _ , booted steps somehow still soft against the shiny floor. He held a datapad in his hands, perusing the weekly trooper tallies within his regimented ranks. This had long since become a routine occurrence, despite the fact that he was perusing the numbers of  _ human deaths,  _ lives lost due to his own decisions and those of other officers like him within the Order. It was one of the reasons the Troopers were categorized by numbers and not names: it dehumanized them, but also desensitized those who had to manage the sheer amount of death. Winning a war required a lot of fodder to be trod upon, and that was the job of the Storm Troopers.

In that way, his father Brendol had been a genius. Cruel and calculative, but a genius. 

Striding alongside the General was perhaps his only faithful and loyal subordinate, Lieutenant Dopheld Mitaka. They walked in tandem together, Mitaka’s arms clasped behind his back, their steps matching, backs straight. They’d had lots of long walks together over many a star destroyer, and it showed. 

“We have almost recouped our losses,” Hux mumbled aloud, staring at the numbers. 

They turned a corner and continued down another long hallway, not slowing their speed, their stiff postures not faltering, keeping a regimented distance between their forms and moving like a well-oiled machine. 

“Sir?” Mitaka followed up, his voice soft and obedient. 

“The loss of the dreadnought and the Supremacy were a devastating loss but the trooper numbers have risen once more.”

“Good, sir,” Mitaka celebrated, his tone bland despite his pleasure at the news. 

“Now that that’s done,” Hux began, locking the screen of the datapad and lowering it, moving his arms behind his back and clasping his wrist in his free hand, slowing to a stop. Mitaka slowed with him. 

“What did you want to bring to my attention, Lieutenant?”

Mitaka stepped a fraction of an inch closer, though no one else was around them. 

“I have word, sir, of Sergeant Alcyon,” he muttered, voice dropped conspiratorially low. 

Hux examined his face with a passive expression, his eyes narrowing somewhat. He then glanced up and down the hallway, before stepping in closer as well. 

“We should discuss this in private,” he uttered coolly. “Follow-,”

“But, sir-,” Mitaka cut in, his own passive expression breaking to one of furious worry. “Sir, he’s… he’s joined the Resistance.”

Hux took a steady and long inhale of breath, doing his best to keep his composure. 

“I said not here,” he managed to grit out, sounding much more calm than he felt.

“But, sir… please, is there no way to bring him back?” 

In truth, Hux was seething. The entire matter was shameful at best, and he was certain he’d violated an ethical rule by sticking his neck out for Mitaka. 

The sergeant in question, Alcyon, was a young and low-ranking officer that Mitaka had gotten himself romantically involved with. Mitaka had been saved by the General, as they had been caught and were both in danger of being demoted and reassigned. Hux had handled it, knowing that if Mitaka got himself demoted, there would be no one as loyal and faithful on his side, no one Hux could trust, and his number of allies had already grown very thin. 

But to hear that Mitaka’s foolhardy escapade had resulted in a highly-trained First Order officer defecting to the Resistance was maddening. To think of all the intel Alcyon could share; the ideas, names, numbers, schematics, processes, and-

Hux’s brain stuttered to a halt as he had to remind himself, he had his own contact in the Resistance. He himself was giving intel to her, feeding her specifically tailored tidbits of knowledge to try and rip the Empire away from the First Order. He was not much better. 

Another thought occurred then: he now had someone he could speak to, to check in on Alcyon. He had his own eyes, in the form of Rose Tico. 

“He is no problem of ours now. Let it lie,” Hux snapped, throwing all of his fury into his tone, hoping it would shake Mitaka out of his weakness. “When the war is over you may… have whatever lover you like, but presently I need you clear-eyed and sensible. Compose yourself, Lieutenant.”

Mitaka never had a very good sabacc face. His expression wilted, his heart clearly trampled upon by the entire mess. But he resolved himself, his trust and good opinion for Hux strong enough to pull him out of his misery and into a more placid sense of feeling. He steeled his jaw and his spine, wiping the sorrow from his face, and forced it all back into his heart, where he bore it painfully, but in secret. 

Hux gave him a look of approval and sighed, nodding once, then turned to continue strolling down the hall. Mitaka waited a few beats then followed, falling into stride once more beside his commanding officer. 

As they rounded another corner, on their way to the Bridge, heavy booted steps came up quickly behind them, and Hux and Mitaka began to edge to the side to make way for them, assuming naturally that it was a brigade of Storm Troopers. However, as they grew nearer, one of the party shouted out “General Hux!”, causing the man in question to pause. 

His spine bristled with electric loathing, his teeth grinding together as he turned quickly on one booted heel, the motion elegant in nature. He snapped to attention before Allegiant General Pryde, Mitaka only a moment behind. 

The Allegiant General approached them briskly, his arms held tight behind his back. 

“At ease,” he murmured as he came to a stop before them, shooing the officers who had been walking with him off down the hall. 

“Lieutenant, you are dismis-,” Hux began as he relaxed out of salute. But Pryde interrupted him. 

“No, Lieutenant. Stay. This won’t take long.”

Hux clenched his fists tightly behind his back, feeling the datapad tense in one gloved hand. 

Mitaka did his best to control his frown, blinking rapidly as he tensed beside Hux, knowing, as well as he, what was coming, and just how hard it was for the General to accept being humiliated so in front of him. Even though it would never change Mitaka’s opinion of the General. He was loyal to a fault. 

“General, forgive me but-,” Pryde began with an air of importance and lofty arrogance matched in very few. “Would you mind explaining to me why you approved leave for over fifty of our officers this morning?”

It was an extreme talent that Hux did not make a face, but instead remained calm and steadfast, his green eyes gray as stone in the dark light of the destroyer’s hallway. 

“They were scheduled to, Allegiant General. I thought it-,”

“I’m sorry, you thought it… _ wise  _ to send our officers on a  _ vacation _ in the middle of a war?”

Pryde examined Hux with an intense scrutiny and immense amount of dislike, the sort of feeling that had carried over from when Pryde had met Hux as a boy, friend of his father, and heard of his failures and shortcomings from Brendol himself. It had colored his impression of the boy, now man, and he found him rather lacking. In any event, he liked to keep the bastard on his toes. 

“It is protocol, sir.” Hux was now barely concealing his fury, speaking through tightly sealed lips, his anger rolling off of his straight spine. It was almost visible in the hall. “Officers need a mental reprieve from duty to keep them strong and focused.”

“You make them weak,” Pryde hissed, eyes round and lips pulled with disgust. “Is that any way to create a strong herd?”

Hux felt his stomach roil with nausea, his head spinning at the echo of words he’d heard from his own father long ago. Pryde would never let him forget who he belonged to; who he was, and where he came from. He continually put him in his place, time and time again, and Hux was sick of it. 

“I have canceled the order,” Pryde said in a clipped tone. “Do not give it again.”

With that, Pryde was off, moving away from the pair of them, without being so dignified as to dismiss them with honors. 

Mitaka did not speak, knowing what was coming, but stood there, shoulders stooped slightly, as Hux became more and more tightly wound, his ears bright red and hot, his jaw clenched in exhaustive anger. 

“S-... sir?” Mitaka tested quietly.

“Move along to your post, Lieutenant. I will summon you later.”

The words were said in an almost monotonous tone; careful, dark, and rife with furious loathing. Mitaka dared not disobey him, and nodded his salute before taking off down the hallway, hurrying to his necessary location. 

Hux watched him go, having to physically remind himself not to be barbaric like Ren, not to clench so tightly that the datapad snapped in half in his fist. He glanced down at the object in question, feeling a pain in his jaw from how hard he clenched his teeth, and noted a little red, blinking light. 

He opened the datapad. She had messaged him. 

**Thornflower:** So… you have the details? 

It was oddly comforting, this simple message. He could hear her tone of voice, imagined the little turn of her head, proud chin jutting out, deep brown eyes issuing him a challenging look. It was exciting to remember, regardless of how much Pryde elected to put him down, regardless of how much the mane tainted the Order Hux had helped to build, he had a plan to remove him. The thought of it filled him with small comfort. 

Composing himself, Hux breathed in deep through his nose and exhaled on a sigh, tapping a quick reply to her before closing the app to allow the code to scramble their connection. 

**Gingersnap:** Details at 2300, tonight. Comms call. 

This data did not have to be delivered over audio, but instinct alone had made Hux order it, typing and sending the cable before he could even think through the gesture. He was unwilling to admit it, but some very small, very quiet part of him was now intrigued, and desired, in some very miniscule part, to hear her voice. He explained the feeling away by acknowledging that her assistance in helping him rid the Galaxy of Pryde was comforting. 

Tucking the datapad underneath his arm, he strode forward to be about his business, letting the shame and humiliation and fury roll off of his back like water off a porgs feathers. 

  
  



	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose and Hux have their first secret spy meeting on Arkanis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, beautiful readers. I've been struggling with cabin fever and Covid-depression so my writing has slowed down. I was multiple chapters ahead, but I'm catching up, and I only have two chapters ready to publish after this one. 
> 
> I ask that you be patient with me if my writing spirit does not return. I love this story, I love this pairing, I love writing, but sometimes it's hard when depression is involved. 
> 
> Thank you for reading. I appreciate it with all of my heart.
> 
> Thanks to my beta: [ @ElfMaidenOfLight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElfMaidenOfLight/pseuds/ElfMaidenOfLight). I couldn't do it without you!

“Landing now, sir.”

Armitage Hux rose to his full height, locking his arms behind his back out of nervous habit, his eyes glazed over and looking far away, anywhere but at the greenish blue surface of the planet upon which he was born. Lieutenant Mitaka had already hailed a public landing pad, and the engine purred around them as they slowed down, making ready for landing. The wing tips lifted, and the vehicle lowered onto the pad, settling with a light shake, Hux swaying a little on his planted feet behind the man piloting. 

“Thank you, Lieutenant. I will meet you here tomorrow at sixteen hundred, sharp.”

Mitaka agreed with a sharp “Yes, sir!”

Hux nodded, turning to exit the cockpit into the open carrier hull. He tightened his gloves and reached for the night-vision goggles hanging off the handlebars of a First Order issue speeder bike, pulling them over his head with meticulous care not to muss up his hair. As the ramp extended before him, he hung them around his neck, his uniformed cap came next, which he fixed atop his head with pristine ease. 

Taking the handles of the speeder in his gloved palms, he kicked it’s hover function into gear and pushed it down the ramp, not even bothering to acknowledge the dock workers. . 

They stared at him as he strolled by, “The General” of the First Order, dressed in his uniformed regalia. No one dared speak to him. 

The public landing space was located on one of the two cliffs overlooking Scarapus Port, a space port two clicks up the shore from where the old Empirical Academy lay. A road wound down from the cliffs and through the spaceport and on to the academy. The Academy lay in ruins now, so the road only went so far before nature had reclaimed it; the remains had long since been picked over by scavengers. But it was where Hux was going, where he was going to meet his Resistance contact, Rose Tico, in secret the next morning. 

For today, Armitage hiked one leg over the speeder and kicked the engine into gear, trying his very best to ignore the thrumming beneath his skin in response to the very aesthetic nature of this planet and how it called to him. Despite his best efforts, he seemed to come alive in his very bones from just being among the fields of swaying grass and black, craggy rock cliffs, the roar of the angry sea beyond and the smell of the salt-air, billowing dark gray clouds and distant crack of thunder promising yet another downpour. 

As he settled into the seat, the speeder humming beneath him, he raised the goggles over his eyes, picturing a little red-headed boy who had loved the feel of this planet beneath his tiny hands. It had been his first teacher when no one else cared to teach him, taught him that falling could hurt and that some things were dangerous to play with; to touch. It had taught him that loneliness could feed the flames of survival. 

He owed Arkanis that much, at least. 

The speeder roared to life and Hux floored it with a twist of his wrist, the bike kicking to life and roaring down the chalky gravel road. He followed it’s winding curves down the cliffside toward the nestled space port village between two black and shadowy rock formations, the tails of his greatcoat whipping behind him in the wind.

As he entered Scaparus, he passed tall, limestone buildings painted bright colors of red, blue, and yellow, a design to help seafarers lost on the planet’s tempestuous seas find their way home to port once more, as well as fish markets whose smell caused his eyes to water and lip to curl, bustling and teaming with the life of the poor and unfortunate on this planet, who lived by the sweat of hard work and subsited off food from the sea. 

Scaparus Port had one inn, and that is where Armitage pulled up the speeder bike, parking it within the thin alley along the side, wedged between the inn and the town’s most bustling pub,  _ The Sea Monster. _ He removed his goggles and deposited them into the bike’s storage unit, doing the same with his General’s cap, smoothing his hair out of habit, before grabbing his weekend bag and slinging it over his shoulder. 

He strode into the inn like he owned the place, not meaning to stick out, but so naturally inclined to stern and military behavior that it happened anyway. 

“I have a reservation,” he uttered to the old and weathered innkeep, his tone businesslike and formal. “Armitage Hux.”

The innkeeper's milky gray eyes stared at him beneath bushy white brows, his wrinkled lips pursed as he grumbled slightly. 

“Hux…” the innkeep murmured, as if the name were curious. 

Hux caught the man’s eyes as they glanced up to his bright ginger hair and scowled at him. 

“Aye, got ye righ’ ‘ere,” the innkeeper replied solemnly, tapping some figures into an old holopad, the mechanics of which whined slightly as if the effort of working for him was difficult. 

“Room ‘leven,” the old man said, handing Hux a key. 

Hux took it, nodded curtly, then strode through the slightly musty foyer and toward the stairs, taking them two at a time until he had reached the second floor. 

He had been here once before, a while back, shortly after his father Brendol had ‘passed on’. He had stayed in room eleven then, as well; it was the nicest and the largest.

Upon entering the room, he was greeted with the view of the old Arkanis Academy, looming in the dark of the shadowy sky through the large glass-paned windows of the room, high upon its black and stony cliff. Hux tossed his bag onto the rickety old bed and strode forward with confidence, gazing out the windows at the place he had taken his start, the place Brendol had run, the place the Republic had destroyed. 

The place his mother had died. 

He’d searched for her once, in the hopes that she’d somehow made it out alive. Though it had been difficult without a name, he had found a manifest of all servant staff that worked at the Academy during the time of the air raid. All staff had been accounted for, located, and buried, by their loved ones around the planet, documented in a memorial erected on the shore near the Academy’s cliffside.

She had a grave here, somewhere on this planet. She also likely had relatives. But without a name to go on… 

Hux inhaled sharply through his nose, gritting his teeth and flexing his fists tightly within his gloves. 

It would not do to dwell on memories. 

After a measly dinner of nerf meat and some sort of local potato in his room, Hux used the tiny refresher to shower and shave, going to bed early and doing his very best to sleep. It stormed all night, and the unfamiliar sound of rain and thunder kept him awake. Eventually, he gave up and pulled out his old holopad, the gift from Sloane, and lay in bed until the early hours of the morning, fiddling with code and programming, rubbing his eyes, the lilac circles becoming a deeper lavender color beneath them. 

Breakfast was a ration of nutritive milk he had brought along with him, and turine tea provided by the innkeeper. Hux enjoyed that bit the most, simply by the fact that tea was so hard to come by and Arkanis did it well, as it was part of their heritage and culture. 

It amused him to think that he had picked up on that particular bit of heritage, but he did not like to ponder if his mother had liked tea. Down that road was a dark and treacherous shadow, one Hux refused to touch. 

Some things were best avoided. 

He did his best to dress like a civilian in order to avoid drawing attention to himself. The innkeeper and a few others mostly likely knew he was The General, but he didn’t need to look the part while roaming about an old Imperial graveyard with a girl from the Resistance. It just wasn’t smart. 

He wore a pair of khaki pants, rain-slickers which were waterproof, over his First Order boots, his gray First Order undershirt, and a thick woolen drape shawl that tied over his form in three points, looking much more like a sweater by the time it was attached, but with layers and ties and dangling strings of wool fabric, as was the style on Arkanis. The wool wicked moisture, for the most part, but when soaked, it dried quickly. 

He styled his hair with water instead of with pomade, knowing that, if it were to rain, his hair would just become drab again anyway, and it might help him to blend in somewhat, intending to clean up after his meeting with the girl, before returning to meet Mitaka at the landing pad. 

Prepared, and with hours to spare, Hux left the inn, locking his room, and hopped on his speeder bike, driving it deep into the winding hills, following the curve of the road that led to the abandoned Imperial Academy. 

It was all rubble now. Rubble and nature. 

Armitage parked the speeder in a secluded location, behind a large pile of debris overgrown with a series of weeds, vines, and various grasses. Pocketing the data-chip that started the bike, he turned and entered, slowly, cautiously, through a broken archway, his boots crunching on sand, gravel, and tiny, near pulverized shards of glass. 

The Academy had been a fortress, and was built more like a gorgeous cathedral when it still existed, a massive square shape of gray stone and colorful glass, majestically carved archways of triangular shapes and vine-like patterns.

He could still remember, as he passed through the main entryway, the large wooden gate that would swing inward and open, the sea dragons that had been carved within their massive frames. He had been frightened of them when he was little, unable to discern between the reality of sea monsters in the oceans beyond the cliffs and these massive ones that held their jaws open in furious accusation of all who entered. 

Brendol had not been sympathetic to his child’s fear. Brendol had done his best to eliminate the emotion from him entirely. 

Armitage felt his stomach churn slightly as he stepped into the center of the castle area, taking in the mounds of rubble grown over with grass and shrubbery; the short trees jutting through the earth, trying to reclaim some sense of life. He turned with his whole body, arms clasped behind his back, and looked upward toward the center parapet, where the Commandant's quarters had been; his father’s house. 

His step-mother had been found there, her body shredded with shards of seagreen and blue glass, her torso caved in beneath the weight of a massive rock. 

He remembered feeling no sympathy for her. She had left her own marks upon him, and her death had left nothing but a hollow feeling. 

But, some morbid part of him wished he had known how  _ she _ had died, his unnamed mother. Those gruesome details might disgust a weaker person, but if he could know, have answers, have one more piece of the puzzle filled in, he would feel that much closer to her.

Having time to fill before Rose would arrive, Hux set off for the Commandant’s quarters. 

As he went, memories followed after, like ghosts. 

There, in the corner of the courtyard, he could remember being bitten by a spider in the garden. Hardly older than four standard years, he was crying, the wound swollen. He was accompanied only by a nanny droid, who’d fixed the wound for him but did not stem his tears. The droid hadn’t a mouth with which to kiss the wound, as mothers would do. 

On the stairs he slowly climbed, one heavy booted step at a time, he could remember being shoved backward by his step-mother as she grew aggravated with his trying to race up and down them. He had broken three bones and had to spend a week in bacta-treatments. 

In the commandant's quarters, he remembered where he had been forced to sleep once he was old enough not to be nursed, a soldier's pad on the floor beneath the table, told it would make him stronger. 

He remembered the burns, the slaps, the degradation… 

He remembered spying messy strawberry-golden curls across the courtyard through the window. 

He remembered asking Brendol Hux about them. 

He remembered receiving a split lip for asking questions he should know he ought not to be asking. 

Armitage breathed in deeply, examining the mess of the large room, careful to avoid the enormous, gaping hole in the center of the floor. Instead, he stepped carefully over crushed rock and mess, creeping down the hallway, toward his father’s study. 

It had become a sort of ritual for him now. Everytime he came here, Hux would slip into his father’s study and take something from him, something of value, something Brendol had cherished or held much more dear than his own flesh and blood. He would carry it with him along the broad parapet walkway of the fortress, then toss it into the ocean where it would sink to the sandy bottom and live with the sea monsters. 

It was little more than littering, but it gave Armitage some small satisfaction to know that he was still shitting on his father’s corrupt legacy even years after his death. 

Today, he chose a box of cigars, molded and crusty from rainwater that had warped the box over the years. His father had smoked at least two a day, probably more, hypocritical enough to indulge himself in expensive delicacies while he called others weak for attempting to even get a bit of salt for their table. 

Armitage tucked the soggy box beneath his arm and ran his hand along the top of his father’s desk, brushing away rubble and sand, his fingers landing on a little scrape across the top of the wood. 

Every little thing in this place was attached to a dark memory, but Hux had buried them all so deep, so far down, as far down as the bottom of the ocean, so that they would never, ever be able to hurt him again. 

He steeled his expression and exited the quarters, slinking along a wall behind a large rock and inching through the overgrown brambles on the top of the parapet. It took him quite a while to get to the tower that stood tall above the cliff. He wasn’t even sure the entirety of the staircase still stood, but upon reaching it he found it intact, and so he climbed it, careful on the rickety stone stairway. Parts of the stairs had fallen away, leading for him to need to hop or step wide over portions of the distance, but eventually he did reach the top.The wind whipped his softened hair wildly around his head, yanking on his sweater, as he stepped out into the open air above. 

The sky was dark and cloudy. Rain could be seen out on the teaming surface of the ocean. He examined the dark blue waves, imaging Brendol’s rotten corpse sunk beneath the surface, being fed on by the infamous sea monsters known to dwell within the waters. 

He stepped to the edge and pulled back his arm, then unceremoniously hurled his father’s expensive and ruined cigars into the sea, watching it become a small brown spec into nothing, hitting the surface with a splash he could not hear, it was so far down. 

He stared at the space for a long time, his gloved hands resting on the broken stone wall of the tower. After a moment, he turned back toward the Academy. It was close to their designated meeting time. 

Sure enough, he spotted her, a moving blot of dark green on the far horizon, slipping through the gaping hole that used to be the massive front doors of the Academy. She moved hesitantly, looking so small from so far away. Hux narrowed his eyes on her, feeling something strong move through him, though he was unsure of what it was. 

Rose was not certain she was in the right place. 

The entire ruined castle was a strange sight to behold, and she wondered why anyone in their right mind, let alone Armitage Hux of the First Order, would want to meet here. 

Val was waiting with her ship; Eko was back on base as an emergency contact to the Resistance, should anything go wrong. They had landed in a field, avoiding the landing pad altogether, in order to keep everything top secret, mostly on Armitage’s suggestion. 

He hadn’t told her where to meet him; his instructions said “the old Academy” and nothing more. 

Rose wandered amongst the rubble, lost and confused, about ready to begin calling his name, when he stepped out from behind a large rock, his hands clasped behind him. 

She stopped in place, taking him in, surprised at the look of him. 

He didn’t look “First Order” at all. He was dressed in green and khaki. His hair was soft, a few tendrils of it hanging in his forehead, the ginger accentuated more highly by the green wool on his torso. 

Something warm fluttered in Rose’s chest. 

She stamped it out with a firm grunt, refusing to acknowledge the potential attractive qualities of the cruel genius behind  _ Starkiller _ .

“There you are,” she growled, striding for him impatiently, her fists clenched in  _ his gloves _ , the ones she forgot she was wearing, because this planet was chilly, and she’d put them on without thinking. 

“Here I am,” he remarked with the barest hint of sarcasm, his green eyes flashing. 

They were so much brighter here, his eyes, amid the gray of the sky and the green of the planet’s turf. 

Rose grit her teeth. Pretty green eyes couldn’t erase all the atrocities this man had single handedly exacted upon the galaxy. 

“So, is this where we’re meeting? Or are we going somewhere less… broken down?”

Armitage pursed his lips slightly, raising his chin and staring down at her from his position of lofty height above her. She was dressed in khaki fatigues, though he could not see them very well beneath her top layer, which was a forest green rain poncho, long enough on her short frame that it fell to her knees, leaving only a sliver of khaki pants visible above her boots. Her arms were swallowed in the sleeves, as well, and the rumpled hood sat behind her two buns on her back, making her look even smaller than she was, swallowed in the canvas. 

Hux had to control his features to keep his emotions passive at the sight of her, looking a bit like a little frog. 

It wasn’t unpleasant. 

Then he noted her hands, as she raised one of them to swipe an errant piece of hair out of her face. His eyes widened. She was wearing his gloves. 

“I’ll have those back now,” he uttered automatically, unsure why but feeling suddenly uncomfortable to see her wearing them. 

Rose cocked an eyebrow in a challenge, holding up her hands. The gloves did not fit her well, and patches of the leather hung from the frame of her hands, the fingers loose and scattered in unnatural directions as if she had many broken ligaments. 

A most charming flash of pink colored her cheek bones, but she glared at him. 

“I-... don’t think so. You don’t want them back anyway. They’re so dirty they don’t even smell like y-,”

Rose cut off, her cheeks coloring a little darker, pressing one palm to her hip and sighing in aggravation. 

“Look, we don’t have much time. Can you just give me your intel?”

She knew how he smelled…? 

Armitage wasn’t quite sure what to do with that information. He swallowed awkwardly, stiffening in place, and had just begun to speak when a few fat droplets of rain hit him square in the forehead, nose, and the top of his head. He held up a similarly gloved palm in time to see several more droplets fall onto the black leather, and quite suddenly, they were caught in a torrential downpour. 

Rose laughed out loud, a sound of squealing excitement, and ducked her head down, lifting her hood over her and gesturing excitedly in the haze of heavy rain. 

Hux himself, not prepared for this much water, was quickly becoming drenched, and sneered at the audacity of the storm to treat him as such. He turned and broke into a sprint, running in a direction, any direction, that would provide shelter from the water, unsure even if Rose was following him. 

He took up shelter beneath one of the more in-tact structures still standing, a large wall of stone with a firm roof, though the flora had taken it upon itself to bloom through the cracks and crevices in the stone. The entire area was covered in vines and leafy vegetation. Hux propped himself against the wall, shaking out his drenched ginger hair and smoothing it back against his head as best he could. 

Rose joined him, still laughing as she pulled back the hood of her poncho. 

Her smile was bright and beautiful, tendrils of dark hair curling in the damp around her face, and she seemed to forget herself and who she was with as she approached him, smiling freely. 

“I love the rain,” she murmured quickly, shaking out her gloved hands and her poncho in an attempt to dry herself. 

Hux avoided her expression, scowling as a breeze blew through the crags in the stone; a blast of cold air whistled past his drenched form.

He began to shiver. 

“Good grief, you dummy,” Rose noted the gesture almost immediately, giving him an irritated look. “I thought you were from here or something.”

Before he could protest, Rose was lifting her poncho up off of her and handing it over to him. Her clothes were entirely dry beneath, protected by the canvas cloth. 

“No, I don’t need it,” Hux refused sullenly, rising to his full height, attempting to seem strong. 

“Take it,” Rose shoved it into his chest without a second thought, propping her hands on her hips and turning to stare out into the rain. “It’ll keep the wind off you, at least.”

Hux tossed her a distasteful look and stared at the yards of fabric in his hands. The wind blew once more, causing his thin frame to shiver again, harder this time, and he caved and folded the poncho over himself. It fit him a little better than it did her, he was so tall and lean. The end came to the tops of his thighs, and folded nicely over his arms. The wind was instantaneously shielded from his body and he felt infinitely warmer. 

He glanced over at her, peering at her slightly round cheeks, studying her expression as she stared at the falling water with a soft smile. The tendrils of damp hair around her face, the color of her eyes in the reflecting gray light, he’d never seen anything quite so fascinating. 

He forced himself to look away, straightening to his full height once more and clearing his throat. 

“So… we should get down to business. We’re not quite in a hurry, but I need to make my appointment at the landing pad,” he uttered with a forceful tone of formality. 

Rose turned to peer at him, head tilting to one side, and nodded. 

“It’s about time. What do you have for me, Gingersnap?”

Hux grimaced. 

“Please, in person… just call me Hux.”

Rose raised a brow. 

“Not  _ General  _ Hux?” she questioned smartly, an impish smile playing on her lips. 

Armitage frowned slightly, mildly confused. She was behaving differently here, in this different environment. She was lighter somewhat, more free, more curious, more independent, and it was throwing him for a loop. He would feel more comfortable with it if he could put his finger on why: perhaps the informality of the moment, the rubble around them could have her feeling like this wasn’t a professional occasion, perhaps their manner of dress. 

She was staring at him now with a strange expression, one halfway between loathing and curiosity. 

“You are not my subordinate, therefore you do not have to refer to me by my standard title,” Hux murmured quietly, careful to keep all emotion out of his tone. 

Rose broke into a soft smile. “That’s not what you said last time.”

“Last time you were my enemy.”

It was very hard to think of him as the same person here, dressed as he was, looking so different. This planet seemed to draw out his color, play with his aesthetic atmosphere; draw all his positive qualities further into the light. Unconsciously, Rose could see how some would find him handsome.

But even his behavior… she never would have guessed she’d hear those words coming out of his mouth. And because he had said them, she felt more than willing to acquiesce. 

“Thank you, General,” she mumbled, slightly sheepish. “What information do you have for the Resistance?”

Armitage folded his arms over his front, peering off into the dark and stormy weather just out of reach, feeling a few droplets of water roll down his chilled back. 

“Firstly, I must tell you…,” he began, unsure of how she would respond, so he took it slowly. “The data you retrieved from the dinner is not complete.”

Rose turned her head toward him in alarm, eyes sharp and narrowed. 

“We’ve got data on TIE fighters and new armor and everything.” Rose muttered. “Are you referring to the partial data and blueprints?”

Hux blinked, momentarily appearing surprised. 

“You… have access to those as well?”

Rose nodded, shrugging slightly. “I’ve had Val on it but he was unable to make sense-,”

“Wait-,” Hux held up a gloved palm, his eyes narrowed, unable to help himself from stepping closer. “Slowly, please. You-... you have someone in your employ who goes by the name of Val? What is his surname?”

Rose’s eyes widened. She did not want to give Val’s identity away. How could she have been so foolish? 

“That’s none of your business, Hux,” Rose retorted strongly. “Back to why we’re really here- I have the files in question with me.”

Rose reached around to pull the datapad out of her back pocket, pulling off one glove with her teeth, slipping it off in one easy gesture. 

Hux watched the motion distractedly, a little curl of emotion flickering within him. 

He shook it off as she approached him, Rose turning into his shoulder, stepping close enough that he could see the screen as well. Rose flipped slowly through the strange files: the lists of large numbers, the blank blueprints with large ‘to scale’ instructions and model configurations. 

“What are these things? Do you know how we can interpret them? There doesn’t seem to be any descriptive data.”

Hux examined her as if under a new lens, his expression bright with impressed fascination. He pressed his lips thin; his posture straight and rigid as a knife. 

She went on. “I’m positive it’s something big, and something incredibly complicated, judging by the numerical patterns in the data. Can you… can you help?”

He hadn’t really thought he’d find further reason to be impressed by  _ her _ , but the way she spoke freely about schematics, leaned in to him, asking his opinions, as if she knew he was knowledgeable on the subject and trusted his opinions. He had the brief and most interesting desire to work with her on something, anything, a technological project where he could pick her brain and utilize her talents. 

Forcing himself to remain composed, he raised his brows and took the datapad, gently, from her hand. 

“You are correct: the items in question are enormous in size and equally complicated.”

She frowned, watching him flip through the broken files, studying his face. 

Rose was more than aware of his technological capabilities and engineering genius. Still, she scowled at him slightly. 

“You know what these things are. You worked on them,” she guessed.

Hux met her eyes and shook his head slowly. 

“Actually, no,” his lips were pursed tight as he handed the datapad back to her. “It should please you to know that my days designing and engineering weapons of mass destruction are at an end.”

Rose was torn with conflicting emotion to hear these words: pleasure to know that probably one of the galaxy’s most brilliant engineers was now removed from a position he had used to murder billions, but also empathy; she knew exactly how it would feel to be forced to give up on something you loved and were good at. 

For the first time since teaming up with this man, Rose had a spark of interest in wondering how that brain of his could be put to use on the right side, the good side, with the Resistance. She allowed herself to imagine it, for just a moment, Hux standing beside her in her cave office, leaned over a shared datapad, challenging her on molecular energy and the laws of physics.

Her cheeks bloomed with the slightest blush. She cleared her throat. 

“But-... would you be able to… get us this missing data? It’s your job, as a spy.”

Hux inhaled deeply, taking a step back and away from her, running a hand through his hair as he looked out into the still pouring rain. 

Rose studied him, lowered the datapad, then placed it back in her pocket. 

“I can tell you what it is.”

His tone was glacial, hard, firm. When he turned to meet her eyes, the green was smooth as glass, cold. 

“Guns- massive guns. The equivalent of Starkiller, and they are numerous.”

The world trembled beneath Rose, her legs shaking, and her eyes immediately welled with tears. Unable to help herself, she shifted, pressed her palm against the crumbling stone wall, the other going over her heart. 

_ Numerous starkillers… _

“That… that can’t-...” Rose stumbled over her words, head reeling. “Why would the Order do such a thing?! Numerous… that means… what? They’re just gonna roam the galaxy and blip anyone out of existence that disagrees with them?”

Hux shook his head once, his mood dissolving into frustrated anger. 

“It’s not the Order,” he hissed, one fists clenched against his thigh, meeting her eyes with a stone cold glare. “It’s-,”

He broke off, unwilling to play all of his cards with her. But she was looking at him with such pain, such desperation, and on this subject, he did agree with her. 

Starkiller had been necessary: one tool to rid the galaxy of the hypocritical New Republic in one fell swoop. But billions of Starkillers? If Pryde had his way, there would be no Galaxy left to even rule. It was ridiculous, a waste of funds and an improper way to handle diplomacy, even war. 

“Pryde is drunk with power and doing everything he can to assure he never loses it,” Hux explained instead, giving her at least half the truth. 

Rose swore and turned away from him, kicking a boot against a chunk of rock. It rolled away from them, tumbling out into the rain where it was soaked immediately. 

“Hux,” Rose uttered his name, the sound clear and firm amidst the swishing sounds of falling rain. 

He glanced toward her, clasping his hands behind his back, waiting for her to go on. 

“I need you to get me the rest of those files, the… the other parts of them. We need the data on those guns.”

He took a deep and steady breath, inhaling through his nose and out through his mouth, staring out at the rubble of his former life. 

It was bizarre to be here with her, giving her information that would result in his imprisonment or execution, standing on the grave of his father’s legacy. It occurred to him then that the greatest  _ fuck you _ he could ever give to Brendol Hux was to do what he was doing now: help the Resistance. 

The thought brought a little smirk to his lips. He turned toward her, nodding his head.

“I will do my best.”

Rose met his eyes, noting the slightly smug expression, curious to know why he felt so proud of himself in this moment. Perhaps because she needed him, had to depend on him, ask him for things. 

But at least he had agreed. 

“Thank you.”

The smirk faded from his lips then, his expression melting into one of light surprise, before disappearing beneath his cold mask once more. 

The rain around them lightened.

“Shall I walk you back to your ship?” Hux asked, his tone obligatory. 

Rose shook her head, giving him a slight smile. 

“Nah, I think I’m going to go down by the ocean, anyway. I’ve never seen one up close. I’d like to walk the beach.”

She looked so excited again, forgetting, once more, where she was and who she was with. It seemed so easy for her, to stand amongst so much rubble and death, yet still seem so cheerful, so bright; like sunshine just waiting behind the clouds. 

He snorted softly, covering his nose with a gloved hand and looking away. 

Her head turned sharply toward him. “What?” she asked accusingly, catching the way he was laughing at her. 

“I implore you,” he said, his smarmy, Imperial accent dripping with erudite sarcasm. “Before you take a walk on the beach here, find me another contact I can work with at the Resistance, because you will not be returning.”

Her eyes widened. “What… do you mean?”

“The oceans of Arkanis are teeming with all manner of carnivorous sea creatures. They are not opposed to coming close to shore for their feeding.”

Rose should have appeared scared or chastised, but instead she just seemed disappointed. She adjusted her gloves, studying the sky as the rain stopped completely. 

“Bummer.”

Armitage remembered, though, a cove he had played in as a child, one that was far back from the shore, protected by rocky formations. It was safe from the most dangerous of sea monsters, and he’d played there, alone, as a toddler. 

Perhaps he could show her… sometime… 

“We should leave before the rain returns,” he murmured, then began to lift her canvas poncho off of his shoulders. 

“No, keep it!” Rose instructed him with a snort. “I have another, and I’m guessing you don’t really have protective rain gear.”

Hux paused, studying her, feeling rather insistent he give it back, but she was already striding forward out of their makeshift shelter. He dropped the cloth and watched her go, pausing when she was a few yards away and waving at him in a sharp jerk. 

“Catch you later,” she called, then disappeared behind large piles of rubble. 

Hux waited a moment longer, fingering part of the canvas poncho between two gloved fingers. They both had items belonging to the other, now, and it felt strange to him, acknowledging that fact. 

Meeting here had relaxed much of the tension between them. He could not wait to be back on board the  _ Steadfast  _ where the memories of old could no longer plague him, where he was still  _ General Hux _ , despite his loss in rank and prestige. As he made his way back to the parked speeder bike, he contemplated this planet: he’d always loved the shapes, sounds, smells, and sights of it, the feel of the seabreeze and the rain and the ocean water. But aside from the physicality of this place, he had no pleasant memories of the place he once called home.

Now, however, there was the sight of damp, dark curls brushing against a smooth, tan cheek, an act of kindness given undeserved in the weight of the canvas poncho around his shoulders, a brilliant smile and musical laugh, a brown-eyed gaze of awe.

As Hux drove the speeder back to Scarapus, as he showered and donned  _ The General _ once more, combing his hair into submission with pomade, he tried to wipe these thoughts out of his mind, plagued and annoyed by them. But they lingered, more insistent even than the ghosts of his past, and as he bid temporary farewell to this planet, catching sight of that ruined Academy through the viewports as Lieutenant Mitaka guided the transport into the sky, he remembered not Brendol Hux nor his childhood, but being caught in the rain with a pretty girl. 

“Did you enjoy your trip, sir?” the Lieutenant asked conversationally. 

Hux clenched his fists behind his back, swaying slightly as they pulled into space and punched into hyperdrive. 

“I suppose,” was his only reply. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spy and handler return to their side of the war. Hux has an important task: steal critical intel from Pryde.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your lovely messages of hope and support. They've really encouraged me to keep going! I cannot wait to share the rest of the story with you all. 
> 
> As always, thanks to Alex for being so kind and thoughtful to edit my story! I could not have done it without your help.

The journey back to Ajan Kloss would only take a few hours. Val piloted their little transport ship with ease, operating flight functions, another nod to his extensive First Order training. Rose crashed in the co-pilot's seat beside him, her booted feet upon the dashboard space devoid of buttons, arms wrapped around her stomach as she studied the flashing blue light of the billions of stars that passed them in hyperspace, her thoughts lost in the events of the day.

“Was the General civil?” Val asked after a few moments. 

“He was, surprisingly,” Rose muttered with a laugh. “Though that does remind me… I let your name slip, sorry, but he… seemed to know you. Did you ever work with him one on one?”

Val gave her a sidelong glance, his brows raised, concern in his eyes. He did not speak, but turned to face forward once more, keeping one gloved hand resting on the steering function, even though they were on auto-pilot. 

After a long moment, he sighed deeply, then spoke. 

“I was briefly part of his team, but-... he likely remembers me from the-... the incident with my Lieutenant. Hux was the one who demoted me and sent me to reconditioning.”

Rose’s booted feet hit the floor with a tandem smack, and she sat up quickly, her hands on her knees, leaning across the aisle toward her subordinate. 

“No way. He did that? Why was the punishment so harsh?”

Val swallowed a thick lump in his throat and shrugged, eyes narrowed at the painful memory. 

“The Lieutenant probably requested he remove me, so I would no longer be a distraction to him.”

His bright blue eyes were shining now with unshed tears, and his gloved hand was flexing over the steering yoke, trying to control his emotion. 

“Oh, Val… I’m so sorry.”

Rose’s voice was a sweet and welcome balm, and Val chuckled drily, shaking his head with a sarcastic smile. 

“It-... is what it is. I was a fool. I won’t make the same mistake again.”

After a few moments, Rose shifted back in her seat, letting out a long and heady sigh. 

“I-... know how it feels to be scorned by someone you love,” she murmured softly. The pain was still too real for herself, even if she hadn’t thought of Finn in a long time. 

Perhaps it was the new job that was keeping her mind and heart busy and entertained. 

“Did you… love him?” Rose asked tentatively in the quiet of the ship. 

The man across the cockpit cleared his throat slightly, wiping a tear quickly from his eyes, then pat his hand on his thigh a few times as if trying to work up the courage to speak. 

“... with all of my heart,” he admitted, finally, in a very small and quiet voice. 

“Ugh, the First Order ruins EVERYTHING!” Rose shouted, kicking one booted foot against the bottom of the console and clenching her fists. “Screw that guy, and screw Hux. Screw all of them.”

Val let out a quiet laugh, but it sounded genuine this time. Rose grinned, encouraged. 

“There’s lots of cute men in the Resistance, anyway. They’re rugged and handsome, strong… cute butts,” Rose went on with a little giggle. “When you’re ready, we’ll find you somebody to love.”

He met her gaze then, looking very much like he didn’t want to think about loving anyone else ever again, but he gave her a warm smile, a little cheered by her words. It lit up his face with youthfulness and joy, and Rose bloomed with happiness just to see it. 

“Thank you, Lieutenant General.”

“Rose.”

“Thank you, Rose.”

“Better!” she smiled back at him. 

As they descended into companionable silence once more, the datapad in her back pocket vibrated slightly. Rose fished it out of her pocket with a flick of her wrist, pulling the gloves away from her hands so she could open the device and use it easily, reminding herself that she either needed to get a different set of gloves that fit better, or alter his.

A message waited for her from Hux. 

**Gingersnap:** Please confirm when you have arrived safely back at your base. 

Rose pursed her lips, her stomach churning slightly with a strange feeling. Odd of him to give a care at all about her safety. Perhaps he worried she did in fact wander off to the Arkanisian beach afterall. Tongue between her teeth, she tapped out her reply. 

**Thornflower:** On my transport now. How kind of you to care about me.

She almost regretted sending it now, as she’d meant the second message sarcastically, but reading it now, she realized it could be taken as genuine. Her cheeks warmed in embarrassment as she waited for his reply. 

**Gingersnap:** You’re carrying my intel to the Resistance. Of course I care. 

Rose read the last four words at least a dozen times in a span of seconds before she cut off her thoughts and attempted to redirect them. Before she could think better of the decision, she was pushing him further.

**Thornflower:** Oh, of course… It’s the intel you’re worried about. I see. 

**Gingersnap:** Yes. Exactly. 

Rose’s lips pulled into a reluctant grin and she let out a soft laugh, leaning back in her seat and propping an elbow up on the armrest, reading back over their messages. 

Val eyed her in curiosity from his seat beside her, brows raised. She did not notice. 

**Thornflower:** I didn’t get to ask you about that cat… Millicent? Was that her name?

There was no reply. Rose glanced up and stared out the window once more, then down at the map system on the dash. They weren’t far from Ajan Kloss now. 

“Are you still in communication with the General?” Val asked softly. 

Rose blinked, then nodded, pulling the datapad inward and upward a little closer, out of habit, so Val would not see. 

“Yes,” she answered, feeling slightly guilty for some reason. “He gave us some good intel, but I’d rather wait until we’re back on base to share it, if you don’t mind.”

“I understand.”

The datapad flashed and buzzed again with an incoming message. 

**Gingersnap** : What about her? She is my cat. 

**Thornflower:** What does she look like? Why do you have a cat on board a Star Destroyer? 

_ How are you capable of loving something so small, fluffy, and infinitely weaker than you? _ She wanted to ask, but figured he wouldn’t take too kindly to that sort of question. 

An image of the cat in question appeared quite suddenly, and Rose could not help herself, letting out a gasp of appreciation and a coo of longing. 

Millicent was rather large and incredibly fluffy, with pointed ears that sported spikey tufts of white hair at the tips, the whole of her very furry body a bright ginger color. Her eyes were a soft bluish green, wide and round, and her nose a soft pale pink. Rose itched to run her fingers through that fur, to nuzzle into her neck and snuggle up beside her. 

It had been many years since she’d seen a cat in person, and this particular one was quite majestic. 

Her collar, a thin leather band, was embedded with little blue gemstones, and had a First Order Emblem tag around the bottom. Rose wondered if it tinkled like a bell. 

**Thornflower:** She’s beautiful!! I want to meet her! How lovely.

Rose had completely forgotten who she was talking to. All thoughts of war, murder, crimes against civilians, completely flown from her mind. As Gingersnap, over the holonet, and as far as this cat was concerned, she had difficulty remembering just why and how much she hated this man. 

**Gingersnap:** She is, thank you.

“Lieutenant General?”

Rose snapped her gaze upward, surprised to find they had come out of hyperspace and were making their descent onto Ajan Kloss, rounding over the dark side of the planet.

“What is it?”

“Just-... letting you know we’re almost there,” Val murmured, sounding slightly amused. 

Rose nodded, then returned to the datapad and tapped out a very quick message. 

**Thornflower:** Landing now. Thanks for the intel. Talk later. 

By the time the ship had landed, Rose had not received a reply from  _ Gingersnap _ , but the indicator reported that he had read her message. Feeling slightly let down by this, and conflicted as to why she felt so disappointed, she pocketed the datapad and strolled with Val down the off-ramp, drawing Eko into a hug as she met them near the entrance of the cave. 

“How’d it go?” Eko asked them in a hopeful voice. 

“No problems,” Val uttered with a firm nod, shaking her hand by way of greeting. 

“The contact gave me some news. It isn’t good,” Rose uttered with a slight wince. “But I want to tell the General before I tell you. Sorry, guys.”

“No, we understand,” Val assured her. Eko nodded with a tight smile. 

Rose thanked them and wished them goodnight, then found her way through the cave to General’s personal quarters. It was an odd hour to visit, but she’d been instructed to give her report as soon as she had landed. Thankfully, the General was awake, though she was dressed for bed in a nightgown, wrapped in a strange, silver robe, her hair down around her. 

Even as old as she was getting, the General still seemed every bit that Princess in her beauty and grace and strength. Rose admired her in this softened form as she approached, shy and sheepish, feeling a little strange to be bothering her in this informal time and setting. 

Leia, noticing her, making all of Rose’s shyness vanish as she summoned her closer with a wave of her hand. As Rose approached, Leia grabbed hold of her wrist and forced her to sit on the bed beside her, where they could whisper easily between the two of them. 

“Glad to see the General didn’t harm you,” Leia joked slightly, smiling softly as she took in Rose’s healthy appearance. She’d had reservations about sending Rose off to Arkanis alone with Hux, which was why she’d insisted that Val be the one to accompany her instead of Eko, the one experienced with piloting, fighting, and the General himself. 

“Yeah, I-...” Rose broke off thoughtfully, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I think he’s genuine. I don’t believe he’ll hurt me.”

“It would be wise to always think he could,” Leia chastened her softly. “General Hux is not known for his compassion. Though… it is good you are building a rapport with him. That will help in receiving data.”

“Building rapport? You mean… like… getting him to trust me?”

Leia nodded, a strand of silvery gray hair falling over her shoulder. 

“It’s the best way to get information from reluctant people. The relationship is always the most important. Which is why I think no one else is as perfect for this job than you!”

Rose mulled over the compliment, pondering its truthfulness. She’d never considered her knack for making people warm up to her as an actual talent, more just a personality trait she possessed. But, if Leia approved and thought it would be useful, perhaps she could try to lay it on a bit thicker with the General. 

“So what did our cantankerous source give us to work with?”

Rose reached into her pocket and pulled out the datapad. She leaned over, showing the blueprints to the General, scrolling through the numbers and schematics. Eventually, she reached the data that made no sense. 

“Bad news,” Rose narrated as she did so. 

Leia took the datapad from her and rifled back through the contents, squinting her eyes as if that would help her make sense of it all. 

“Hux told me they’re working on another Starkiller sort of project, except this time… it’s multiple guns.”

Leia gasped softly, the datapad trembling in her hands. She eyed Rose warily, her heart thrumming with worry. 

“Are you serious? Is he sure?”

“Quite sure,” Rose affirmed with a nod, giving her an apologetic smile. “But there’s hope. He’s agreed to get us the missing data. Or at least… he said he’d try.”

Leia smiled wryly at that, rolling her eyes partially in her head, handing the datapad back to Rose. 

“If you had that data, could you…-”

“Yes,” Rose affirmed again, her voice strong and clear. “We could work proactively against it. I promise you, General. I’m on the case.”

Leia smiled beautifully then, seeming so proud of the girl in front of her. She folded her weathered hands in her lap, chuckling softly, and studied the young Lieutenant General. 

“Funny how you can deliver bad news and make it sound good in the span of seconds.”

Rose tucked the datapad back into her pocket, folding her hands over one thigh and yawning slightly. It had been a long day. 

But the General did not dismiss her yet. She leaned closer, pressed a hand over Rose’s hand, patting it gently. 

“How are you coping, dear?” she asked, dropping her voice a tad lower to ensure no one would hear them. “With the grief… I don’t mean to be insensitive, but… losing someone as close to you as a sister is not easily overcome. I want to be sure you are okay.”

Flattered and surprised that Leia would care so much to ask, Rose smiled softly, shaking her head. Resting beneath her shirt, in the cradle of her breasts, she could feel the warm metal of her pendant.

“I’m fine. I-... miss her every day, but-...,” Rose broke off, nodding her head as if dispelling any negative feeling. “Keeping busy is helping. Everything I do for the Resistance, I do for her, too. In her honor.”

Leia smiled warmly, patting her hand again. 

“As it should be. Your sister would be so very proud of you.”

Rose’s eyes welled up with tears, but she smiled them away. 

“Thank you, General.”

“Well, unless there is more you need to tell me, I do need my beauty sleep.”

“No, General,” Rose stood immediately, tucking one hand in the back pocket that did not contain the datapad, the other running through the tangle of her hair. She’d not had a chance to clean up since the rain on Arkanis. 

“Good work, Rose. Keep it up.”

“Good night, General.” Rose called as she exited the area. 

“Good night.”

On the  _ Steadfast _ , Armitage Hux did not have time to rest. It was straight to work for him, having missed many of his general assignments and duties while on Arkanis, and he wanted to get a head start on locating the intel needed for Thornflower. To him, time was of the utmost importance. The sooner Pryde and Ren were out of the way, the better. 

Ordering Mitaka to follow, he swept down the shuttle’s ramp and into the massive hanger, his swift, booted steps ringing out in echo as he made his way through the bustle of the hangar, arms clasped behind his back, tails of his greatcoat swirling around him. As he passed, troopers scurried out of the way and officers of all ranks stopped to salute him with a quick and chipper “sir!”.

It felt nice to know he still held some modicum of authority within the Order. He hoped their loyalty would follow him into the future, after the Resistance had removed certain key players from the board. The thought of them both, Ren and Pryde, finally extinguished, made him swell with pride, excitement bringing a small smile to his face. 

Stepping into the turbolift, Hux faced the exit with Mitaka beside him, both standing at attention. His thoughts were lost in what he had to do; the menial tasks, chores with numerous stacks of paperwork, but also his personal task. Locate and verify Rose’s missing files. 

This would be difficult to perform, but he felt confident he could accomplish it with the ally at his disposal. 

“Sir…” Mitaka sought his attention, his head turning toward him and upward. 

Hux met his gaze with barely a turn.

“Yes, Lieutenant?”

The younger male seemed to hesitate then, his mouth opening and closing, fists shifting behind his back. He swallowed and cleared his throat. 

“Did you … hear word of Sergeant Alcyon?”

Hux faced front once more, letting out a long sigh. 

“We have more important matters to discuss, Lieutenant, and this is hardly the time or the place.”

Mitaka was silent. 

Hux peeked over at him, feeling a swell of something painful in his chest at the look on the young man’s face. Mitaka must have thought the General could not see him, his expression so forlorn, so empty, so heart-broken. Hux’s jaw worked tightly, teeth grinding slightly, and he sighed once more, shifting his gaze forward and staring hard at the doors of the lift. 

“He is alive.”

Mitaka’s head turned sharply at this, and he could not conceal the sharp intake of breath or the slight smile of gratitude on his lips. 

“Thank you, sir,” the Lieutenant mumbled softly, his voice the happiest Hux had heard in a very long time. 

Strange, he mused to himself. Happiness was not normally something found on a First Order ship, such a shame…

He caught himself mid-thought, clutching his hands tightly into fists, filled with sudden, irrational fury. It was weakness to value such things. There was no room for such foolishness on his ship, amongst his ranks. 

But Hux could think of at least one person who cared about such things. If Mitaka were  _ her _ underling, instead of his, she would undoubtedly play matchmaker, rather than make the hard decisions needed for the good of the Order. Disgustingly idealistic. 

Hux scoffed to himself under his breath. She was foolish and weak. What kind of person delighted in something as trivial and inconvenient as being caught in the rain?

When the lift stopped on their floor, Hux swept out on swift feet, hurrying down the hallway with ease of motion and authority, as if he had very important places to be. Mitaka had to scurry to keep up with him, bounding forward on his toes and slinking behind Hux, step for step, trying not to encourage the other man's fury. 

Once safely within his office, doors closed, Hux lowered himself into his seat behind the desk and sighed, falling out of his rigid posture and melting into a tired slump on the desk. 

Mitaka noted that even Hux’s version of “slumping” did not warrant the word, as his elbows propped up his half-rigid form, but he still bore the appearance of someone weighed down with entirely too much stress. He watched as the General removed his gloves, lay them aside, then began to massage his temples with the pads of his fingers. 

The Lieutenant turned toward the table with the whiskey decanter and poured the man a glass, carrying it to him with stable hands and resting it beside him on a coaster. 

“Thank you, Mitaka.”

The Lieutenant smiled slightly and nodded, making his way to his seat. He liked times like this, when it was just him and Hux, when the General relaxed and called him by his surname instead of his title; when he seemed to be a little bit more human. 

“Sir, if I may,” Mitaka began carefully, not wanting to increase the General’s stress. “What was this visit to Arkanis for? Were you seeking your mother’s grave again?”

A muscle under Hux’s eye twitched slightly at the last question. Mitaka, however, did not flinch, a testament to the intimacy of their working relationship, despite their formal behavior. 

Hux raised his head and shook it slightly, reaching for the glass and taking a small, subtle sip, letting the liquid sit on his tongue. When it started to burn, he swallowed, relishing the tingle all the way down.

“I had a meeting. It is imperative, life-altering, Mitaka, that you never make that known to anyone.”

Mitaka trembled slightly at the tone of Hux’s voice. 

“Yes, sir,” he agreed with a firm nod. “But sir, what will you tell the others when they ask?”

“Family matters,” Hux waved a hand through the air as if the question were trivial. “Pryde would never deign to suspect anything otherwise.”

“And who did you meet with?”

Hux leveled his tired gaze on Mitaka. 

“I will keep that to myself for now.”

Mitaka nodded, ever the obedient and faithful subject. 

“Are you still working as a steward in the Allegiant General’s office?” Hux asked, by way of opening the conversation into what he needed. 

Mitaka frowned, shifting backward slightly in his seat. Hux had not brought up his punishment work since assigning it to him a little over a month ago. The first month he had been assigned to the sewage department, menial and disgusting work, but had been given the cleanest of duties within the department: the trash compactor. 

This month’s round, he was designated little more than secretary, forced to work for none other than the Allegiant General himself, one of the many staff members who had no rank. The other staff members had treated him with disdain, being merely civilians themselves. He hated working in that office, and hated even more that fulfilling his punishment just reminded him that he was doing all of this without Val. 

“Yes, sir. I am.”

Hux looked pleased; he took another sip of the whiskey. 

“I need your help with something, Mitaka.”

The Lieutenant felt his stomach sink somewhat. He had risen through the ranks rather quickly, and was a bright young man, so he knew how to put two and two together. Hux asking about his position in the Allegiant General’s office leading into an inquiry of assistance; it meant that Mitaka was going to have to put himself in danger. He would do it without question for General Hux, but it did not make it any less stressful. 

Allegiant General Pryde scared him. The Supreme Leader scared him even more. 

“What do you need?”

Hux ran his finger around the rim of his tumbler, watching the ripples of vibration on the surface of the liquid in the glass, contemplating how much he should reveal to his Lieutenant. 

The young man had proven himself a worthy companion and loyal servant time and time again. Hux trusted him implicitly. But he was being extra careful. Now bordering on paranoid, Hux had taken to wearing a Beskar plate of armor beneath his uniform whenever on board the  _ Steadfast _ or in the presence of Pryde or Ren. After being demoted, discovering he was being watched, Hux felt the proverbial leash and collar tighten ever so slowly around his neck. It would not do to make careless mistakes. Every precaution must be taken. 

“Which time of day is Pryde’s office typically vacant?”

The ill feeling in Mitaka’s stomach deepened and increased dramatically. He swallowed, a sudden dryness in his mouth. 

“Uh… probably the hours between o’one hundred and three, sir.”

He hoped against all other hopes that Hux would not be ordering him to retrieve whatever it was he needed from Pryde’s office. Even so, he resolved that he would do it, if asked. 

“During those hours, is anyone else present?” Hux’s voice was stern, as it should be. He was talking of breaking into the most powerful man in the entire First Order’s office, likely to steal something. This was no laughing matter. 

“N-no, sir. No one. What is it that… that you need to get?”

“Files,” Hux uttered, only speaking frankly because of the jammers he’d placed, and routinely tested, in his room. 

Mitaka swallowed again. 

“W-... what sort of files, sir?”

“The less you know, the better it will be for you if you end up in interrogation,” Hux uttered matter-of-factly, reaching into his desk to pull out one of his datapads. “For now, you may consider yourself removed from this request. I only needed the times. If I require further assistance from you, I will make it known.”

The Lieutenant nodded, feeling suddenly quite relieved. He considered this a dismissal, and got slowly to his feet, brushing out the rumples in his pants. He nodded curtly to the General and turned to exit.

“Erm… Mitaka,” Hux called out to him, slightly hesitant.

The young Lieutenant turned back to face the General, frowning. 

“Your service is admirable,” Hux began, meeting his gaze with a firm stare. “This past month has not been an easy one, but your tenacity and loyalty are valued beyond compare. When the war is won, you will be rewarded. I will personally see to it.”

Mitaka waited at the door a moment, his eyes flickering back between the General and the floor, his hand hovering over the control panel. 

“... I understand, sir. Thank you.”

With a nod and a brief parade salute, Mitaka depressed the button and exited into the hallway to be about his evening business. 

Hux stared at the space he had possessed for a long moment, now slouched fully in his chair, too exhausted to stay upright any longer. 

He uncuffed a few of the snaps of his uniform jacket, shrugged off his coat, then stood and walked to the opposite side of his office, pressing the control panel on the wall so that the protective durasteel slats rescinded to reveal a large viewport that extended out into deep space. 

He watched the stars, the swirling patterns of dust and matter, taking a long sip from his whiskey. 

Should he be wary of Mitaka? Or was it merely the paranoia and stress getting to him? 

Over the past month, he’d come to understand that the Alcyon boy had not been a mere plaything for the Lieutenant. The young man had allowed himself to develop feelings for him, and now Mitaka was feeling remorse for what had happened. For what had needed to be done. 

There was a time Hux believed Mitaka would never betray him. But after he’d sent the man’s lover away? One that had  _ joined _ the _ Resistance _ ? 

He needed an offer of goodwill, something that would appease the Lieutenant enough to keep him loyal. With this thought in mind, he maneuvered back toward his desk and picked up his datapad, his coat, and his gloves, then commanded the office to lock up for the evening via the wall’s control panel, and stepped through the inner doorway into his living quarters. 

Millicent greeted him at the door with an affectionate swipe around his legs. Arms too full to stop and greet her, he toed off his shoes and went toward the sofa, resting the whiskey tumbler on a coaster and laying the coat gently and neatly on the back of the couch. As soon as he sat down, the ginger cat jumped into his lap. He scratched behind her ears once, twice, then ordered her down, not quite in the mood. 

She retreated with a flick of her tail and a bitter mewl of annoyance. 

Taking the datapad in hand, he typed out a message to Rose. 

**Gingersnap:** The man in your employ, Val. His name is Val Alcyon, is it not? Do not lie to me.

Per usual, her reply took moments longer than he would have liked. He sighed with impatience, growling slightly when it finally appeared. 

**Thornflower:** Why are you so curious about him? He’s off the table, Hux. You deal with me and me alone. 

_ Hux. _

Fury coursed through him, and he briefly entertained the idea of launching the datapad across the room. But he was not his father, nor was he Ren, and instead he clenched his fists tightly around the datapad as he rose and hurried into the bedroom. Reaching into the nightstand drawer, he pulled out his comms device and hailed her immediately with an impatient scuffle, sinking to a seat on his bed. 

When Rose answered, she sounded surprised, letting out a tentative “Hello?”

“Are you a complete fool?!” Hux hissed into the comms device, tapping furiously away at the datapad, running a complete memory wipe of the program they were using, both his and hers remotely. 

“If you’re gonna talk to me that way I’ll just sign off right now,” Rose bit back, sounding highly offended. 

“You do that and we’re through,” he snapped, watching the numerical data scroll by on the datapad with irritated rage as it deleted itself. “You used my name. You typed out  **my name.** ”

“Oh.”

At least Rose had the decency to sound chastised. She was silent on the other end of the line, her breathing soft and delicate. 

For some reason, it tempered his anger somewhat. He cooled rapidly, especially once the datapad indicated it had completed its full wipe. The chat program opened once more, purged and swapped onto a completely new holo-network. 

“I-... I’m sorry,” Rose murmured, sounding ashamed and sheepish. “Is it really that… big of a deal though? I mean… It’s just… three letters.”

“It is highly likely my name is on a search alert involving anything over the holonet, or did I not make it apparent to you that I am mistrusted and being watched?” he sniffed at her, but he sounded much less angry and more annoyed by this point. 

“Oh.” 

“I believe the damage has been avoided. I’ve reset the communication program.”

There was a scuffling sound as Rose rooted around some objects, the crinkling and crackling of interference, then a sigh of dismay. 

“Well, the picture of Millie is gone.”

Hux tutted. 

“Millicent. Not Milie.”

“Sure, H-... kriff, sorry. Gingersnap,” Rose groaned with self-loathing. “It’s been a long day. I think it’s best we just… communicate tomorrow, kay? Signing off.”

“Wait,” Hux interjected, rising to his feet in his room, as if physically standing could help dissuade her urgency to leave. “About Alcyon, I do not mean him harm. I wish to arrange something.”

Rose sighed, the sound full of her suspicion and mistrust. 

“Arrange what? He’s not going anywhere. He’s staying on my staff.”

“Not that,” Hux grumbled, exasperated. “Are you familiar with the name ‘Mitaka’?”

Silence on the other end of the line. Then…

“Oh, the happy couple you and your stupid Order destroyed? Yeah, I’ve heard about him.”

Hux had to breathe evenly and count to five, reminding himself not to take her words personally, not to become defensive and explain to someone who would never understand the severity of how foolish Mitaka and Alcyon had been to do what they had done, let alone get caught. She wouldn’t understand that he had protected them both from a fate much worse than the one he had bestowed upon them. 

When he spoke next, it was with obvious controlled derision. 

"Lieutenant Mitaka is concerned, which is starting to affect his work ethic. I don't need him jeopardizing our arrangement. Upon our next visit to Arkanis, bring the former Sergeant along so that the two of them may communicate. That is all.”

Rose breathed in sharply, surprised, and opened her mouth to speak. Before she could get a word in, Hux had called “Signing off” and depressed the button. 

The comms line dropped. 

Hux sank back down to his seat on the mattress, laying the datapad aside and removing his earpiece. The datapad flashed with a message delivery but he ignored it, feeling disgruntled and different and out of his own skin. 

Rose Tico was doing this to him, and he wasn’t quite sure what he was feeling or why. He disliked it immensely and saw fit to put some distance between them, at least for the evening. Not having slept well the past few nights, he was exhausted, the purple beneath his eyes looked almost like bruises in the dark. As he checked the time on the chronometer above his bed, he knew sleep was once again out of the question. He stood, smoothed his hair back, hid the datapad beneath his mattress, and slipped on his gloves. 

Dressed to impress and in finest regulation standards, with a data chip ready to copy in his coat pocket, Hux strode with purpose down the hallways toward the turbolifts, unsure why he was feeling mildly nauseous about what he was going to do. 

He had learned to sneak around under the watchful eye of a man much more terrifying than Pryde. The beating Armitage would have experienced at the hands of Brendol Hux if the man only knew how many times his son had been in his private study… The things he had taken, seen, violated. 

It had given him some small modicum of power in his youth, and he’d become quite good at being in places he shouldn’t and not being found out. 

Only, everything was different now. 

He was tired, keyed up, in the midst of committed treason with a girl who dredged up feelings within him that were best kept buried. 

His most loyal man was inadvertently guilting him over what he’d done, what he’d  _ had no choice _ but to do, plaguing him, even though Armtiage Hux had rarely even felt such guilt in his life. 

To top it all off, Pryde had friends on the other side, the kind who could influence the Force, the kind Hux distrusted immensely. His position in the Order was precarious. 

If he did not get this data for the Resistance, they would not stand a chance against the Sith, and then who would rid the Galaxy of Palpatine and Ren? 

Hux steeled himself, straightening his spine as he exited the turbolift onto Pryde’s floor. 

The lights were dimmed, the entire space absent of any sort of presence, human or droid alike. Hux did not hesitate, but moved carefully, quietly, his footsteps tiny echoes in the small, barely lit hallway, as he approached the doorway toward Pryde’s private office. 

He’d expected to need to input a cleaners code, he’d prepared one just in case, the best way to remove suspicion. The pneumatic doors, however, were already open, pulled into the walls of the ship, leaving the entrance to Pryde’s office open and unprotected. 

_ It’s a trap _ , his mind screamed , but he ignored the notion, dismissing it as paranoia, and steeled himself further, stepping over the threshold gently, one foot at a time. 

He walked like a cat, silent and purposeful, moving over the expanse of broad entry way and into the massive room, scanning side to side to be sure no one else was present. Making it to the console where Pryde’s officers worked and kept his data, he gave the room one last safety scan, then slipped between the open partitions into the center of the C-shaped bank of computer consoles. 

Safely within the ring, he wasted no time, but tapped the computers into life and began sifting through data, file after file, his ears on high-alert for any sort of sound, the hair prickling on the back of his neck. 

His jaw hurt from how hard he clenched it as he flicked through source after source, item after item, narrowing down by keyword, search feature, then data manipulation, but the files were extensive. 

If he could not find what he needed, he’d have to come back. 

But they were there, password protected. 

It was not hard to figure out the Allegiant General’s password. He was an old man after all. 

Hux laughed out loud, as he typed in the term  _ E X E G O L.  _

The folder unlocked, and Hux rammed the data chip into the console, transferring the files over. Thankfully, it was almost instantaneous, and as they finished, he removed the data chip, fingers trembling as he went to wipe his search history. 

A clacking sounded from beyond the open doorway, somewhere down the hall, and Hux’s heart leaped into his throat, his stomach dropping. He hurried through his work, powering down the console, then pocketed the chip once more, slinking into the shadows along a bank of navigation consoles, sliding silently for the door. 

No one stopped him as he left, prompting him to let out a sigh. Hux turned down the hallway, hurriedly navigating his way back toward the turbolifts. But on his last turn, one taken sharp and quick, he ran smack into a tall, thick, dark shadowed body.

He bounced away slightly, his arms instantaneously going up in defense, but he lowered them as he steadied himself and took in the sight of the man towering before him.

Kylo Ren, masked. 

“General Hux,” he uttered through that discordant, unnatural whisper. 

Hux’s nostrils flared as he pulled himself into order, rising to his full height, clenching his hands behind his back. 

He kept his mind blank, having been practicing this, though he could always feel it when Ren tried to read his thoughts. Schooling his thoughts, his mind became a seascape of sand and cloud and softly tumbling ocean waves as Kylo Ren stepped closer. 

“Where are you going?” the masked man tilted his head. “Or from where have you come?”

“To bed, Supreme Leader,” Hux uttered automatically. “My work for the day is finished. We all need our rest.”

“Surely not you, General,” his tone reeked of sarcasm. “You’ve gotten so lazy lately. Perhaps I need to give you a project.”

Hux fumed, unable, like with others, to keep the irritation from his face. He thought of all the things he’d like to do to this man, all the ways he wished he could harm him, all the times he’d studied ways to prevent a Force user from tapping into that mythical substance, having come up short every time. 

All the ways he hated this man and all that he stood for. 

Then he felt it, that cold tendril, creeping toward him, an invisible yet solid substance probing against his mind, winding around his throat. 

“Perhaps you’re too busy with projects of your own,” Kylo Ren hissed. “Shall I force you to tell me?”

The substance tightened significantly around his throat. Hux clenched his teeth so tightly against his cheek he tasted blood, and the distraction was enough to temper his fury. 

If he reacted, Ren would only continue. 

He stood there for who knew how long, glaring at the wall over Ren’s shoulder, keeping his thoughts blissful and blank, inciting no suspicion. As the Force began to ebb away from his throat, he un-stuck his jaw, his cheek throbbing with the pain of his bite. 

“I do all that I do for the good of the Order, Supreme Leader. If you wish I take on another project, I will do so.”

“For the good of the Order?” Ren questioned. 

“For the good of the Order,” Hux repeated, with truthful vehemence. 

Kylo Ren could sense the truth in him, and the Force vanished from Hux altogether. Without dismissing him or speaking another word, Kylo Ren strode past him and down the hallway toward Pryde’s office, disappearing behind the corner that Hux had just turned around. 

The General hurried into the turbolift, unable to even breathe, he was so enraged. The entire ride down to his floor he seethed through clenched teeth, tasting blood on his tongue, seeing red spots in his vision. He barely made it to his room before he broke into an outcry of rage, running his fingers up into his hair and screaming once into nothing. 

All his life he’d been made to feel powerless, pushed around by bullies like Brendol. Kylo Ren was just like him, but worse, drunk with limitless power, a power that one could not obtain through hard work, but merely by the blessing of birth. 

It was that which infuriated him most of all; that Kylo Ren, not he, had won the genetic lottery. That the Force should deign to pick only a few to inhibit its power, and that it should leave the rest of the Galaxy weak and deprived of the means to defend themselves from swirling disorder and chaos.

It was not fair, nor was it justified. Armitage Hux loathed the Force, and he loathed those who wielded it, for their abuse of power and their terrorizing ways that ruined the lives of those who were not equally blessed. 

Millicent stayed far away, sensing his mood as he prepared her dinner with furious jerks of his hands, slamming her bowl into its place on the floor and striding for his bedroom. He disrobed quickly and showered, whirling through the motions in an attempt to blow off steam. 

Nevertheless, his fury crawled beneath his skin, burrowing to linger there. The only solace he had was in hanging the data chip around his neck on a silver string, hiding it beneath his long sleeved sleep shirt as he crawled into bed. 

Something beneath the mattress vibrated slightly, momentarially surprising him. 

Hux reached down, pulling out his datapad. There were two messages from Thornflower. He almost did not read them, but something drew him to her words, something forced him, in a split second decision, to unlock the pad. 

**Thornflower:** I’d appreciate it if you didn’t just… hang up on me. But I agree, to the terms.

**Thornflower:** [an hour later] I’m surprised you’d even consider allowing them to do that. It’s… actually pretty kind of you. Thanks. 

_ Kind of you… _

Kind.  _ Kind?  _

The word rattled around Hux’s head for a moment. He felt baffled by her choice of term, thinking the complete opposite, never having been referred to as kind before. His motivations for the decision to reconnect Mitaka and the other boy were anything but kind, though he could hardly tell her that. 

He scowled at the screen and typed his reply. 

**Gingersnap:** Do not be foolish. The arrangement is necessary to increase the focus of my Lieutenant. 

Her reply came quickly this time. 

**Thornflower:** I’m sure, Gingersnap. Sounds like you, 100%. 

Hux’s lip curled as he locked the datapad, sliding it beneath the pillow beside him. He ordered the lights to dim as his head hit the pillow, only a few hours between rising time when he had to be back at work.

His final thoughts before sleep were of Rose, and how miscalculating and misunderstanding she was of him: how infuriatingly bothersome. 

He did not think of Ren, or Pryde, or the Sith, or Palpatine. Not on anything that had been stressing and plaguing him as of late. Just Rose, and her alluring foolishness. 

He drifted easily into sleep, and did not wake until he was meant to. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hux and Rose make an arrangement to meet on Arkanis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, at some point my confidence in this story shattered. Not quite sure why or how, but I had two chapters written just sitting in my drive. I'm going to share the two chapters I have while attempting to finish writing this story. 
> 
> If I don't finish, please don't take it personal. It's very hard as a writer to get the courage to share words when you feel that someone else is out there doing it better than you. 
> 
> Please just enjoy what I can give. Thank you.

Arkanis was volatile and rampant with storms the day Hux and Rose agreed to meet one another again. Armitage arrived early once more, only this time, Mitaka accompanied him. 

They’d had to pay extra to leave the transport parked at the landing pad, and for Mitaka’s room, but Hux covered every expense, all in the hopes that this trip would allow the Lieutenant to recalibrate himself and remain a hard-working, faithful, and loyal subordinate. 

It became apparent to the General that he had most likely mistaken Mitaka’s level of affection for the Sergeant, as the time of their communication crept closer Mitaka began to act peculiarly. His hands shook, his voice shook, too, and every so often Hux would catch him staring out the window at the ruins of the Academy, almost longingly. 

This change in the Lieutenant unnerved Hux greatly, to the point that he dismissed Mitaka early to his own room to be rid of his fanatic behavior. It would be better if everyone within the First Order could simply cut off their emotions at the source, as he could. Perhaps he had been too quick to remove the Sergeant from Mitaka’s reach, foolish to overlook how such feelings could also be manipulated. He was curious to know how reuniting the pair, even if only briefly, could motivate Mitaka’s work ethic. 

His father would call him weak for giving in, but Brendol Hux had been a fool. All people had things they wanted. If you catered to their wants, their desires, the things they thought they needed, then you could buy their loyalty. 

It was very important that he secure Mitaka’s loyalty. 

It was hard to admit, but the Lieutenant was the only one left on his side. 

Banishing the uncomfortable notion, Hux did his best to get some sleep. 

The next day, he rose early, having already arranged with Mitaka that he would go to the Academy ruins on his own first, to handle personal business. Mitaka was to join him an hour later, when they would meet Rose and Alcyon. 

Rain was already falling in a heavy iron sheet, slanted at an angle toward the ground. Hux was much better prepared this time, wearing water-slicking khakis and a black wool sweater, all beneath Rose’s large, forest green poncho. It kept him warm and safely dry, but knowing it was because of _ her _ brought a strange feeling to his stomach and an odd burning to his cheeks.

He tried to shake the feeling off. By the time he had reached the ruins, the rain had lightened to a soft drizzle and he was able to push the hood back to see better as he climbed amongst the rubble of his past. 

Rummaging through the items in his father’s abandoned study, Hux was excited to locate his father’s plaque of medals. This was a prized item to be able to destroy, especially since Brendol had, on more than one occasion, forced Armitage to polish the plaque while reciting the names of each and every one and how Brendol had earned them. 

_ The Medal of the Emperor’s Fist _ was given to distinguished officers in non-war settings. Hux had secretly always favored this one, in it’s red, yellow, and black colors, as it proved his father had never actually served in war, though he spoke of himself like a genuine hero. The other two present were an  _ Imperial Medallion of Service _ given for those who exemplified Empirical values, and a  _ Commandant’s Service _ award for… 

Hux could not quite remember. It seemed silly they would award a man merely for holding a rank, but then again, it was the Empire. 

“Foolish,” he uttered under his breath, then rose to his feet and tucked the plaque underneath his arm. 

The rain had finally ceased by the time he emerged from the study and onto the parapet walkway toward the tower. Hux climbed the steps eagerly, hopping over the gaps with the nimbleness of a cat, and breathed deep the sea air as he reached the tower, then stopped in place as he took in the sight before him. 

Rose Tico was standing by the edge of the tower, leaning on the side railing, her chin in her hand, little strands of black hair whipping around her face in the wind around them. 

She had not yet noticed him, but stood there with one leg kicked backward, her booted toe dug into the stone floor. As she stared out upon the crashing waves, she sighed, a soft, rather pretty lilt of longing. 

Hux bristled at the sound, something deliciously warm skittering down his spine. He cleared his throat loudly. 

She spun around, piercing him with a narrowed glare. 

“Y-... you’re here,” she uttered, her tone somewhat accusatory. She folded her hands before her, placing her elbows on the railing and leaning back against it, one booted heel kicked up over the other.

To Hux, it looked like she was trying to appear comfortable even though she wasn’t. He raised a brow but approached her with forced ease, coming to stand just beside her, gazing out at the horizon. 

She had a lovely view of the ocean here. No wonder she wanted to see it from this position. 

“Why are you up here?” he questioned softly. He could not very well be angry at her for her curiosity, though her presence here was disrupting his typical ritual. 

Rose pursed her lips, sizing him up before smiling slightly. 

“I saw you up here last time, remember? I was curious.”

Hux met her gaze, brow still cocked. 

“To-... to see the ocean, I wanted to see it,” Rose added hastily. 

“I see,” Hux turned his gaze back toward the horizon, taking in a deep breath of salt air through his nose, trying to steady his emotions and pull himself back into his normally stoic demeanor . 

It was then Rose noticed the object he was holding beneath his arm, and perhaps even more intriguing, the way Hux was holding it slightly out of her sight, as if concerned she may see it. 

“What’s that?” she asked, not even choosing to hide her curiosity. 

Hux tensed up faster than she’d ever seen him, back ramrod straight, free gloved hand fisting so tight she could hear the creak of the leather, his jaw clenched down as he stared off into the distance. 

Rose stumbled over the strange sense of guilt she felt at pressing an obvious button. 

“Okay, should I-... should I go wait for you down there?” 

She gestured toward the ruins of the academy beyond. 

Hux floundered, unsure of what to say. If he gave in and ordered her down, she would perceive his weakness, understand that he was concealing something from her, a sore spot she could potentially prod at and use against him. He may as well act as if it did not bother him at all.

He stepped forward then, closing the distance to the edge of the tower, raised the framed object in his right hand, reached back, and hurled it over the edge as hard and as fast as he could. 

Rose gave a genuine cry of alarm as he did so, and turned to follow the arc of the object as it made it’s rapid, spinning journey down towards the surface of the sea. It crashed into the waves and bobbed upward, spinning in a torrential stream and smashing into pieces against a series of jagged, black rocks. 

Silence descended between them; only the whipping sounds of the wind and the distant crashing of the waves could be heard. Rose’s hands rested on the railway, so close to his, bound in the leather of his gloves. 

Hux took note, then, distracted from the rage in his heart toward Brendol. She had finally altered them. They fit her better now; the fingers were shorter and suited her size, and the extra width at the wrist had been sutured tighter, closer together. 

It still bothered him that she wore them, though the reason escaped him. 

He glanced up at her and paled to find her studying him. 

“What was that about?” she asked, her tone demanding though her expression was soft. 

Hux was a little off beat in responding. He cleared his throat and straightened his own gloves, tugged at the poncho around his neck, then shrugged very lightly. 

“It’s personal. Shall we go?”

He did not give her time to answer, but turned on one booted heel and marched his way back down the stone staircase, Rose tight on his heels. 

“You’re littering in the ocean,” she grumbled, finding it odd to be a head above him, as he was further down the staircase than her. “Do you do that every time you go up there?”

He did not slow, nor did he turn around as she followed, his gloved hand trailing along the stone wall of the tower. 

“Hux,” Rose called out to him, intent on getting an answer, but as he whipped around to face her, having just leapt over a gap in the stairwell, she stepped forward, boot sliding through the space of air in the gap, and fell forward with a sharp cry of terror. 

His hands snapped around her wrists just in time, and he heaved backward, using the momentum and gravitational pull of his position on the stairs to yank her up onto the stairway. She stumbled against him and he steadied her, gloved grip firm on her arms. 

They stood there only a moment, Rose’s palms planted against his thin chest, heart hammering so fast she could hear the blood pumping in her ears. 

He pulled away with a derisive snort, giving her his back once again. 

Without thinking, Rose reached out and caught hold of the edge of his poncho, and as he moved and felt it tug, he stopped, turned back just slightly toward her. 

“Thank you,” Rose mumbled, dropping the corner of the poncho. 

Hux’s lips pulled into a slight sneer and he sighed, running a hand through his hair. 

“Pay attention. This stairwell is dangerous.”

But just before he turned to continue downward, Rose caught the slight blush along his cheekbones, feeling a strange stirring in her belly at the sight. 

He moved slower after that, almost as if he were conscious of her every step behind him and her safety. By the time they reached the bottom, Rose had mused through her thoughts, and scurried around to head him off before he could exit the tower onto the parapet. 

“You said you were born on this planet. That object… this place… you have a connection with it, don’t you?”

Hux’s sharp intake of breath and deep sigh were filled with consternation, but he stopped, crossing his arms over his chest, and observed her through narrowed eyes. 

“It does not concern you. It has nothing to do with our arrangement.”

Rose was quick on her toes, unable to help the slight smile as she needled him, determined to discover his secrets. 

“As your handler, it is my responsibility to ascertain your mental and emotional capacity, in case there ever comes a time when you are unable to perform your duties,” she answered smartly, even throwing in some words that echoed his own prim vocabulary. “So tell me.”

She could nearly hear the grind of his teeth as his jaw tightened but took extreme pleasure in her abilities to be persuasive as he caved. 

“I was born here in this academy. The Commandant was my father. The object I threw into the ocean belonged to him.” 

He spoke sharply, halting between phrases, muttering through a tightly clenched jaw. 

Rose breathed deeply through her nose. “So that… was part of a grieving ritual?”

Hux could not help the dark smirk that turned up the corners of his lips, nor the sarcastic chuckle. 

“Something like that,” he nodded, then gestured down toward the center courtyard of the academy. “Our subordinates are likely waiting for us. Shall we?”

Rose shook her head with wide eyes. “Oh, no they aren’t. Val’s already met up with your Lieutenant. He told me on comms.”

Rose tapped her right ear where the tiny device was hidden. 

Hux simmered with slight anger, doing his best to keep it under control, his gloves pulling into tight fists, jaw clenching once again. 

“Where are they? I was hoping to mediate their encounter.”

“Of course you were,” Rose flashed him a dark look of annoyance, then spun on her heel and began to walk away on the top of the parapet. “You don’t want them to be together. Just leave them alone, Hux. They’re adults. They’ll work it out.”

Her blase attitude was infuriating. Hux stormed after her, managing to keep his upright posture and mannerisms despite his fury. 

“Do you not understand how precarious all of this is? We are at war.”

“I remember,” Rose sniffed, flicking him a glance filled with attitude. Did he imagine it, or did she throw her hip out ever so slightly as she continued ahead of him. 

Finding himself now staring at her backside, Hux swallowed a rough lump in his throat and used his height to his advantage, strolling up along beside her. 

“I need Lieutenant Mitaka to be free of distractions, to be-,”

Rose cut him off with a wave of her hand. 

“Save it for your Lieutenant, then. It looks like it’s gonna rain, so let’s find a spot where we can discuss. You owe me intel, General.”

Momentarily stifled by her, Hux clamped down on his tongue as she hurried ahead of him, down the interior stairwell and out onto the courtyard grounds. 

Something within him was boiling, something that had started off as a slight simmer and was now making its presence quite known; an emotional misdirection that he could actually feel churn within his gut, sending radiating sparkles of electric energy along his skin as he followed Rose through the rubble of his past. 

He could not remember a time he had been here before and not felt morose and melancholy about the state of his past, or walked amongst this tomb and not been followed by the ghosts that haunted him were he not careful enough. Instead, his entire being felt lighter, freed of the weighty presence of grief and anger. 

He could not put his finger on exactly why or how, but he knew this woman was responsible for all of it. The only thing he could not discover was how he felt about the matter.

Rose led him to the place they had taken up shelter on their first visit, the one still intact alcove of space under the side parapet, covered in greenery and foliage. Only, today, there was a new addition; thousands of tiny white flowers peppered the expanse of greenery around them. Rose rushed forward the last few steps, letting out a sound of enlightened awe and joy. 

“These weren’t here last time,” she breathed out, her voice tender with happiness. 

“They bloom after a heavy rain,” Hux explained, keeping his tone mild.

She glanced up at him, her gaze soft and warm, her smile sweet, having once again forgotten she was in the presence of a General of the First Order and not merely a man. 

He watched as she darted under the stone landing and crouched beside a heavy cluster of the white flowers, listened to her audible inhale and coo of excited wonder. 

“They smell heavenly, like… florals and sweet earth. They remind me of…” she broke off, tilted her head, and removed a glove to lower her fingers to caress a few of the soft, white petals. “Like jasmine, almost.”

Hux’s heart lightened in his chest as he came to a stop just behind her, his hands hanging gently at his sides. 

“ _ Réaltaí bláthanna _ is their scientific name,” Hux explained in a calm voice, watching her fawn over the millions of little white flowers. “Locals call them  _ sweet stars _ .”

A memory flit across his mind, brought about by the utterance of the name... 

_ “What do you say when everything is happy?”  _

_ A reddish blonde curl fell over his shoulder as the scent of réaltaí bláthanna overwhelmed him, a thin, pale hand placing a small bunch of the little flowers beside his plate.  _

_ “We say…” _

_ “Sweet stars,” he uttered in his boyish babble. Her hand ruffled his fluffy orange hair.  _

It was his only memory of her, the woman he had long suspected was his mother and now was all but sure of. He was not often allowed in her presence, but one time, he’d successfully escaped his nanny droid and was found by the quartermaster of the kitchens. He’d been allowed to eat his lunch there while waiting to be retrieved. 

The woman had told him the story of the flowers and he’d never forgotten. 

“Sweet stars,” Rose echoed him gently, and plucked one of the flowers, raising it to her nose and inhaling deeply with a warm hum. 

The sight and sounds of this image flushed him with nostalgic warmth, and he turned away haughtily, his upper lip curling as his stomach flipped within him. Why today of all days did the flowers have to bloom. 

“They’re native to Arkanis?” Rose asked, standing up after gathering a handful of the flowers, holding the tiny bouquet in her hand and studying their pretty white petals. 

“Yes,” Hux answered stiffly. “There is a legend, silly, really, of a woman whose lover left her alone on Arkanis to go to war. Daily she wept for him, and …  _ the force _ ,” he uttered it’s name with derision. “Returned him to her along with a shower of stars, which burrowed into the ground beneath the place where her tears were shed, and gave birth to the flower. It is-... a symbol of hope and joy amongst Arkanian people.”

Rose watched Hux’s face as he recounted the tale, surprised that a man like him would remember such a story. 

He looked highly uncomfortable by the end, and cleared his throat when he found her staring, redirecting his gaze elsewhere. 

“All of this life in a place shrouded in death,” Rose mumbled softly, stroking the petals of the flowers once more. “It’s beautiful, really.”

Hux cut off the grumble that threatened to rise within his chest. 

“You can dry the petals; they make a delicious tea, though it causes you to sleep a dreamless sleep. Be careful.”

Rose pocketed the flowers then, even more eager to keep them. 

“You should take some,” she insisted suddenly, and bent down to pick a handful more. Before Hux could protest, she was shoving them toward him with a slight grin. “You struggle to sleep a lot. I can tell.”

“How can you tell?” he asked, his voice bitter with annoyance. 

Rose cocked an eyebrow, forcing the flowers into his palm. 

“Really? It’s so obvious. Just take them.”

Hux tucked the flowers away obediently to placate her, even if he did not intend to use them, then narrowed his eyes upon her. 

“We’re losing daylight. Are you ready to discuss intel now?”

“Oh, yeah!” Rose agreed, suddenly coming to her senses, her grin fading into a slight frown, as she remembered once more just why they were here. “What do you have for me?”

“Do you have your datapad with you?” Hux asked of her, his long legs striding across the space with ease as he sank onto a large, flat stone that had fallen out of the wall, his legs bent up at odd, butterfly angle.

Rose followed him, a little slower as she was reaching for the datapad. Yanking it out of the back of her pants, she fell onto the rock beside him, a little ungracefully, and unlocked the screen. 

“Plug this into the port at the bottom,” Hux instructed her, pulling a leather string up from around his neck and handing it over to her. 

Dangling on the end was a tiny silver datachip. Rose grasped it eagerly, barely able to conceal her excitement, hoping against all hope that the technological plans she was seeking were documented here. 

She plugged the chip into the bottom and opened the files, noting how fast the upload was compared to the large and clunky terminals they had on Ajan Kloss. Tech was tech, but the First Order always had the best and brightest. 

The folder revealed all of the missing data from what they’d managed to steal at the First Order dinner party on Rubis. Rose marveled at them all, her heart straining with excitement and something else, something powerful and overwhelming and proud. 

Rose turned her face up to Hux’s, her lips pulled into a sweet smile. 

“You got them,” she uttered in praise, then turned her gaze back down to the datapad. She missed the light flush to the General’s pale cheeks. 

“Of course, I did,” he grumbled, finding it incredibly disconcerting that she’d had such little faith in him. 

“Was it very difficult?” Rose asked nonchalantly, more focused on perusing through the files, flicking her thumbs over each and every spreadsheet, data logue, and blueprint. 

Before Hux could answer her, she had groaned slightly under her breath, the tone of her voice deep with misery. 

“This-... these… Hux, what is all of this for?” 

Hux met her gaze as she pierced him with narrowed brown eyes, her pretty pink mouth parted in disappointed dismay. 

“This is war, Miss Tico. You said you knew that.” This answer was all he could offer. 

“That’s-...” Rose shook her head, wincing slightly and pressing her fingertips to her forehead, as if she had a sudden headache. “That’s not good enough. Do you want a Galaxy left to rule? All of these weapons, these guns, they’ll-,”

“Of course I do,” Hux hissed, cutting her off. “I want a Galaxy free of hypocrisy, a Galaxy where everyone is equal, where no one suffers. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices for the greater good.”

“And these are your sacrifices?” Rose snapped back at him, feeling the rage begin to bubble up inside of her. 

She thought of Paige, who had died for what she believed in. 

She thought of DJ, trading himself and his soul for money, remembered his patronizing words.

_ War is a machine. _

Where did General Hux stand in all of this?

“I think it important for you to remember that I just gave you these files,” Hux uttered carefully, his voice not loud and angry, but low, dark, and deadly. The thrill of it sent a trickle of electricity down Rose’s spine. She shuddered with the aftereffect of it, studying his face for falsehood. 

“Sure,” she acquiesced mildly, her lips pressed into a thin and sarcastic smile. “Yeah, you gave me these files. But you’re still on the other side-,”

“To work as a spy, for  _ you _ ,” Hux insisted. 

He did not understand her current suspicion of him. He had been meticulous to hide and deny any indication that he was still on the side of the Order.Once Pryde and Ren were out of the way, he still intended on claiming hold of the First Order, but there was no way she should know.

But still, the way she looked at him, as if she could see through his every intention, through muscle, marrow, and bone into the very soul of him, it unnerved him. 

“Alright,” Rose uttered gently, tilting her head and examining him as if under a new lens. “Yeah-... you’re right. I’m sorry.”

Hux nodded once, curtly, feeling justified in this response, if a little surprised. 

It stunned Rose to think how far they had come. As silence surrounded the pair of them, seated together on that rock, a different sort of feeling overwhelmed Rose, until she was feeling suddenly quite nervous and unsure. 

“I will… make certain the Resistance gets this information. But I’ll be the one working to counter your great inventions.”

She said it with a sense of pride, a silly little smile, and Hux found himself helpless to smile back, even if it was only a little quirk of his lips. 

“Need I remind you, I did not work on these particular inventions,” Hux insisted with a mild roll of his eyes. “However, I added something else, if you scroll to the end of the file list.”

Rose gave him a curious look, unable to keep her prior smile from splitting into a grin. 

She opened the datapad again, hurriedly flicking through the files until the reached the end, opening it and feel her heart tumble heavily in her chest, a series of fluttery feelings filling her stomach. 

She was looking at an algorithm program, the coding of which was evidently incredibly complicated and detailed. The result was an increase in accurately tracking and predicting hyperspace movements of large ships. 

“No way,” Rose uttered sharply, her heart leaping up into her throat. “No way, no way… you-... this is the hyperspace tracking code?! Is this how you did it?!”

At the nod of assent from Hux, Rose squealed with excitement and quickly became absorbed in the data, scrolling past the various numerical systems and dataset patterns. She was unable to keep herself from digging into the code and typing out her own commands just to pick apart how the system worked. 

Hux watched her with carefully concealed curiosity, enjoying how she enveloped herself in the data, becoming lost in the rhythm of code. Every now and then she’d make a soft exclamation, tittering about the way he’d built the program, or marveling at how a particular string of code worked. Before long, Hux’s entire body felt warm, and he had to look away from her, a strange feeling within him was starting to make him sick. 

For the first time in a long time, he was flattered. She was impressed by his work; but even more enjoyable was that she liked it, seemed to treasure and value it, despite the fact that it had been used to hunt her Resistance friends down. 

That reminder brought a dose of reality to him, and he cleared his throat, glancing back over at her with a tilt of his chin, so he was looking down at her as she maneuvered the data.

“You know what this means?” Rose muttered under her breath, still lost in the numbers.

“What?” Hux prompted her, disappointed to find he was actually curious. 

“I’m gonna one up you,” Rose uttered in a tone of challenge, raising her face up to meet his gaze with a solid grin, eyebrows narrowed, her entire expression cheeky and bright. “You won’t be able to track another Resistance ship ever again.”

Then she turned back down to the datapad and Hux let out a little held breath of air, surprised to hear it come out in a little chuckle. 

He would rather like to see her try.

“Do your best. In the meantime, I will work on inventions of my own.”

Rose took the bait and glanced back up at him, her eyes narrowed and glittering with interest. 

“No fair, one thing at a time,” she complained. “Anyway, anything you make you better give to me.”

“That isn’t how this works, Tico,” Hux chastised her, watching as her expression moved from one of delight into one of intense annoyance. 

It was actually fun, toying with her in this way. 

“I decide what intel to share, remember?”

“Perhaps I’ll just have to go undercover myself and snoop around.”

Hux bristled at that, eager to change the subject from such dangerous notions. He was certain if she tried to sneak on board his ship again, she would give them both away and he’d be arrested or killed for certain. 

“You seem so certain that you will be able to counter my genius,” Hux found himself goading her, not entirely certain where the decision came from. “But I have yet to see any proof of your abilities. I’m not quite convinced.”

“Ohhhh, I see, okay,” Rose rounded on him, physically turning herself on the rock to face him, drawing one knee up and folding it beneath her, piercing him with a look of challenge. “How’s the  _ baffler _ been treating you guys lately?”

Hux turned slightly as well, unconsciously drawn, and raised one eyebrow. “The  _ baffler _ ? What does that have to-?”

Rose cut him off with a smug grin. “That one’s mine.”

Hux was stunned speechless, both brows jumping on his forehead. He watched as she raised her chin, narrowing her eyes, her lips pulled in a proud little smile. Now she was the smug one for once. The expression caused a burning sensation within him that he could no longer ignore, nor mistake. 

He turned his gaze away, an action of self-preservation and defense.

“Impressed, are you?” Rose muttered, returning to the numbers on the datapad. “Or perhaps terrified, now that you’ve given me one of your greatest achievements.”

It was really too bad she had a bleeding Resistance heart. She was the sort of woman he would have offered a job to based on such an invention on her resume. 

“How did you manage it?” Hux asked after a long moment, unwilling to seem too curious or interested, looking at her through the corner of his eye, his chin propped up between two gloved fingers, elbow resting on his knee. 

Rose looked up at him with a wicked grin. 

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Hux sat up immediately and shook his head, smoothing his palms down his ( _ her) _ poncho, his face warm and pink. 

“Absolutely not,” he muttered stiffly. “I’m sure I could figure it out. You had to bypass the ion emissions somehow, which would require a standard engine baffle and manipulation of the fuel tanks, perhaps the cells themselves and-,”

Hux broke off as he noticed her staring at him, her lips fixed in a strange smile. 

Silence descended between the pair of them, during which neither of them looked away. The smile faded from her lips, becoming replaced with something tentative and hesitant, something almost worrisome. 

Hux felt his heart swell and sink, and he cleared his throat, forcing himself to look away from her. 

She was still the enemy, no matter how fascinating her abilities were, or that foreign and unsettling look in her warm, brown eyes. 

Hux knew the proper decision was to suggest they end their meeting, the objective having been met: she had her intel, and the Resistance was one step closer to being prepared to meet the coming storm. However, Hux was finding it hard to bid farewell to her, or perhaps just the feeling of her presence; the freedom of the moment, the immense lack of weight and stress upon his shoulders. 

“Last time,” Hux began without thinking, keeping his voice tempered and cool. “you mentioned wishing to see the ocean. Is that still a desire you hold?”

Rose’s eyes widened, surprised that he had remembered, and confused as to why he’d brought it up. 

“Uh...Yes!” Rose answered with slight hesitation, curious to see where he’d take this question.

“There is a place and we have time, if you still would like to see,” he muttered softly, doing his best to keep his voice devoid of all emotion, failing just slightly as his tone wavered near the end.

Rose studied him a long moment before responding, catching the change, a strange and weightless feeling overcoming her. Hux no longer  _ seemed  _ different here on Arkanis, he  _ was  _ different. The contrast between this hesitant man and the man she’d met on the  _ Supremacy  _ not even half a standard year ago was stunning. She could not equate the two equally.

She wondered at the cause, but he was as hard to read as ever, a mystery she was determined to figure out.

“Do you-... is it safe right now? I brought my blaster.”

Hux was unable to keep his eyes from roaming over her slight form, unsure how she could possibly be concealing a blaster on her person; her clothing was rather form fitting. 

However, when he noticed her studying him, he looked away quickly and cleared his throat, getting to his feet. 

“It is safe. You will not need it,” he murmured, then glanced back down at her. “Unless you intend to use it on me.”

The look of slight challenge in his eye, the mild quirked smirk of his lips, caused Rose to grin, despite herself, lost to the moment. “Don’t test me, Hux. I might.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Picking up where 8 left off, Hux guides Rose to a beach from his childhood and a mistake is made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to wait a weak between updates but decided life is short and it's ready now, so why wait?! This chapter picks up exactly where the last chapter left off, so Rose and Hux are still on Arkanis. Enjoy! 
> 
> Thank you to [Dianalynn1138](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dianalynn1138/pseuds/Dianalynn1138) for doing a quick beta-read through on this for me! And thanks to [ ElfMaidenOfLight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElfMaidenOfLight/pseuds/ElfMaidenOfLight) who also looked this over a month or two ago, lol. I appreciate your help, the both of you.
> 
> ALSO PLEASE NOTE: I am looking for another beta! I would appreciate someone who knows Star Wars, feels confident with the characters of Hux and Rose, and feels comfortable editing grammar. I would really appreciate your help on this story! Just let me know if you're interested.

Rose followed Hux with bated breath, slightly unnerved by the pitch black tunnel he was leading her through. She wanted to be able to trust him, and here on this planet with him, dressed as he was, it was becoming increasingly difficult to remember all the pain this one man had caused. As he led her through the dark, she kept her hand on the blaster at her hip, tucked into her waistband, following slowly behind him and careful not to let him see. 

They emerged out of the tunnel into a strange alcove that was damp with moisture and softly lit with the gray light from outside a curtain of green vines concealing the opening. The white star flowers from before grew in abundant bunches on the vines, filling the little cavern with their heavenly smell. 

Rose bit her lip and pulled her hand off of her blaster, Hux stepping forward and pulling the vines backward ever so gently, gesturing for her to exit the cavern. 

The look he was giving her was strange. She’d never seen him look so calm before. Taking a deep breath, Rose ducked under the green and white foliage and out into the soft gray of the cloudy day, her boots sinking in soft, black sand. 

“This is Starshine Cove,” Hux muttered as he followed her out, his cheeks flooding with color as he uttered its name. He hadn’t intended to, as he was the one to name it as a child, but it had slipped out at the nostalgia of this place. 

It had been almost thirty years since he had set foot on this sand. He was surprised, it looked exactly the same as he’d left it. Untouched, miraculously, from the bombs of the New Republic.

The cove was an accident of nature, a bit of beach protected by a very high cliff at the rear and two arms of black rock that extended around the beach, concealing it from an outside view; a hidden treasure. The ocean waves lapping at the black sand shore were mild, not the turbulent surf like those beyond the extended rock walls that swept out into the sea, cutting off the beach from the larger, more dangerous aquatic creatures, who could not dare creep into the shallows. 

He could hear Rose’s breath catch in her throat at the beauty, watched her turn and examine the high rock walls, the creeping moss and vines down their sides, the millions of white flowers; the gentle roll of the soft blue waves at the shore. 

Before he could speak further, she had taken off for the ocean in half a sprint, leaving him behind. 

Hux watched from where he stood as she reached the water’s edge, letting the surf lap gently at the toes of her boots. When she turned around and gave him an enormous grin, something inside of him snapped, like a rubber band that had been winding relentlessly had finally given in. 

He breathed in sharply, studying her expression, then strode forward as she turned back to the ocean, crouching at the water’s edge. 

“It’s so beautiful!” Rose cried. She removed the gloves he had given her and tossed them into the sand behind her, then held her palms flat on the surface of the water, fascinated as the waves receded and approached again and again, the foam tickling at the palms of her hands. 

She could not help but laugh with delight, even as Hux’s shadow loomed over her shoulder. 

“Is it safe? Can I-... can I take off my shoes and-...?”

Rose cut off and looked up into Hux’s face. His jaw was clenched tightly, his hands clasped behind his back, his expression hard to interpret. But he nodded, just slightly, thoughts gravitating into his past when he, a little boy, had been just as excited about the sight of the blue waters.

As if permission had been granted, Rose unlaced her boots and stood quickly, toeing them off into the sand beside the gloves, balancing with an awkward laugh as she yanked off her socks, then rolled her pants up to above her knees. 

Hux arched a brow as he watched her hurry to remove articles of clothing, clearing his throat and shifting uncomfortably. Just the glimpse of her calve, which was remarkably toned, something he had not expected, was rousing thoughts he did not wish to ponder about her, and he averted his gaze, his face warm.

She turned to the ocean’s edge without second thought and waded in until the water was up to her knees, crying out in surprise as the water surged forward and soaked over her thighs, all the way up to her waist. 

“Oops,” she muttered, retreating into shallow waters, gazing down at her feet, which looked odd, buried in the black sand through the clear blue water. 

Rose glanced back at the shore, seeking Hux, and found he had seated himself in the sand, his long legs folded up and his arms resting on his knees, content to watch her in silence. 

Such unpredictable behavior, Rose thought. She could not devise his motivations for bringing her here. It was remarkably kind of him, thoughtful even, to have remembered that she had longed to see the ocean. 

The realization left a peculiar feeling in her stomach, one she was not quite ready to address, so she shifted forward out of the depths of the waters and onto the dry beach, marveling at the cling of the sand between her toes. She strode forward until she had reached him, then plopped unceremoniously onto her bottom beside him, legs folded upward and spread out, less classy than he. 

“This place… you knew about it, but you don’t strike me as the type to spend leisure time on the beach,” Rose began, uneasily skirting around all the questions she wanted to ask. 

Hux did not respond, but kept his seafoam green eyes pinned on the distant horizon, stoically silent. 

“Did you… this-... this planet, how long did you live here?”

Hux waited a long moment before turning to study her, his expression still guarded. 

“I was five when I left.”

Rose pursed her lips together and nodded. “Five. Wow, that’s young. Did you… were you in the Order by then?”

It was not unheard of for children as young as five to begin training, especially if they were in the Storm Trooper program. However, officers' children tended to have an easier go of it. 

“Shortly after that, yes,” Hux answered her stiffly. 

Rose frowned and looked out at the sea, hoping he would not see her expression. 

This man had helped to kill more people than Rose could ever imagine, had helped to refine a program that brainwashed young children that had been stolen from their families, helped to design weapons the likes of which had been tested on her home world, the kind that had killed her parents. 

And he’d been taught to do it since he was five. 

It wasn’t necessarily forgivable, but she wanted to know more. She shifted her tactics. 

“This cove… did you come here as a child? Did your father bring you here?”

Hux snorted softly, the only emotional reaction he’d given since they’d stepped into the area. 

“No, he did not. I came with my nanny. This was the only place I could come where I was… out of the way. The Academy was always busy.”

Rose studied his side profile, the point of his nose, the strong cut of his jaw, the angle of his sharp cheekbones, the smooth and soft swoop of his ginger hair, seeking an emotion, any emotion, from him, but he remained resolute. 

She realized, as her stomach began to react with a strange fluttering sensation, that he was quite a beautiful man. Studying him here against the backdrop of black rock and moss, the wind tousling his pretty hair, his red mouth pursed in defiance against any sort of feeling; it was starting to make her a little dizzy. 

Rose breathed deep through her nose, catching a whiff of sea salt and starflowers and leather cologne, shaking her head slightly and reminding herself that she was only getting closer to him on General Leia’s suggestion. 

He was still a murderer, despite how pretty he was, despite how much he was doing for the Resistance. 

“You had a nanny? Rich brats of the old Empire, I guess,” Rose snorted and rolled her eyes, reaching for a handful of sand and watching it seep out of the gap in her fist, blowing gently away in the wind. 

“Can a person choose to whom they are born?” Hux asked quietly, his voice dark with sarcasm. 

Rose glanced back at him, her brows flying up on her forehead.

“I-... I suppose not,” she muttered, thinking once again of the man he had become.

“No one is free of their station,” Hux suddenly snapped, turning toward her and narrowing his eyes on hers. “You’re from… Hays Minor, correct? You were born to fight.”

Rose clenched her fists. “Born to? I _chose_ this life, I-,”

“Your planet was destroyed by the Order,” Hux scoffed, rolling his eyes and turning his gaze back out onto the ocean. “You had no other choice.”

“You have no idea why I chose to join the Resistance, you don’t-,” but Rose broke off, because he had been right, even if it annoyed her. Paige had been the fighter, and Rose had followed her out of love. When Paige sacrificed her life for the Resistance, Rose had finally understood why, inciting a change within her. 

“So you’re telling me that blowing all those planets up was because of who you were born to?”

“No,” Hux uttered tersely through pursed lips. “Blowing up planets is my _duty_ and _responsibility_ because of who I was born to." 

“You can’t blame your sins on your father, Hux,” Rose mumbled as she got to her feet, wiping the sand off of her ass and turning toward the right cliff wall of the enclosed cove. 

Hux watched her as she made her way toward the many large rocks that lay among the sand, connected to the cliff-face of the cove wall, pondering her words. The sins of his father were great, innumerable and immeasurable. But what of his own sins? 

He had never once questioned his methods, not ever in his entire life. Not until meeting this girl. But here he was, wondering if the immensity of death and destruction at his own hands was really worth it; _through war comes peace_ \- but at what cost?

Hux studied Rose as she leaned up against a large rock on the side of the alcove, peering down into the tide pools below. Her hair whipped in the wind, her bare toes straining in the sand to hold her up high enough to see. 

How could someone so slight and so small in such a galaxy contain such passion?

Unconsciously drawn to her, he stood slowly and dusted himself off, pulled toward her as if by an invisible thread. He felt conflicted, the need to remain cautious and keep his eye on his future plans, now overwhelmed by something new, something precious and unique, something about _her_.

As if knowing he were thinking of her, Rose turned and gave him a little smile. This one did not reach her eyes. Perhaps she was feeling guilty for prodding him, yet again, over his past misdeeds. 

He probably deserved it. 

“Tide pools,” Hux uttered gently, gesturing toward the little pools within the rock she leaned over. “The tide comes up and buries a large portion of this cove at nightfall, trapping water in the chasms of these rocks. It is a fully-functional ecosystem.”

“Wow,” Rose breathed, her tone genuine with admiration. Within the chasms of the rock were hundreds of tiny and colorful creatures, bright orange and blue and neon pink, soft green and butter yellow. She’d never seen anything so beautiful, their leafy and tentacle limbs swaying gently in the briny water. 

“Can I touch them?” Rose asked, turning back to give Hux a silly grin. 

“Are you a child?” he responded quickly, one brow quirked. 

Rose snorted and shrugged. “Guess I deserved that. Did you never touch these as a child, then?”

The General sighed heavily. “I did and I was stung.”

She did not need to know that no one had been there to warn him. The nanny droid had not been exposed to these species and had therefore issued no warning before he discovered them a threat. 

“So that’s a no,” Rose frowned, but placed her palms on the rock and leaned over the water, content to watch the sea life within.

“I guess they’re safe here because there’s hardly any sun,” she mused, glancing up at the clouds.

Hux inhaled sharply through his nose, and as Rose glanced back over at him, stiffened and turned his back to her. When he spoke, his voice was trembling. 

“Have you seen enough, Tico?” he asked softly. “We should head back.”

Rose pulled away and turned toward him, wiggling her bare toes in the sand and frowning. 

“I-... guess you’re right. I can come back here on my own, now that I know where it is. You can go on ahead. I’ll tell Val where I am.”

She turned back toward the tide pools then, but Hux hesitated. For some reason, he was bothered that she did not intend to walk back with him. 

It really was none of his business if she wanted to stay, but... 

With great effort, he nodded and turned away, taking long-legged strides across the black sand and back toward the tunnel. 

“Goodbye, Hux,” Rose called gently after him.

He stopped and turned back to catch her staring, her expression unusually vulnerable. 

Hux nodded curtly, then strode forward, disappearing behind the sweet star flowers and into the dark of the tunnel. 

Rose studied the place he had been for a very long moment, then strolled over to her shoes and plopped back down into the sand. After dusting her feet off and replacing her socks and boots, she pulled on her gloves and got to her feet, letting her hands hang by her side as she stared at the ocean. 

It was so beautiful, so peaceful; the rolling of the waves seemed to move through her very spirit, to stir her heart and soul. She was glad she’d been able to see it, and thankful for the person who had led her here. 

It struck her as odd; she’d discovered she rather liked to spend time with him, once the barriers of war were down and he was much more relaxed and less focused on winning. She had once thought he would be smarmy and arrogant, a disgustingly violent and wretched person, but he was not.

Hux was actually kind and thoughtful, and he had admitted more than once at truly caring about the galaxy. 

She thought of DJ, of the man who had revealed to her and Finn that the First Order and the Resistance received their weaponry from the same individuals, that war was an endless cycle, a machine that destroyed, even if you were on the right side. 

But the Resistance had never intentionally destroyed innocent lives. 

At least, she hoped they hadn’t. 

The Republic most certainly had, as the ruins of the old Empirical Academy would attest.

Pulling herself out of her thoughts, Rose turned to make her way toward the tunnel, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. As she did so, something caught her eye, a gap in the back rock wall of the cliffs around the cove. She could tell by the water line of the rock that the entrance was high enough to be protected from the rising tide. 

Something drew her toward it, and she walked slowly up the length of the beach, her steps becoming more difficult as the sand grew thicker and more dry, her feet sluggish. As Rose drew closer, however, she discovered the gap in the rock actually led to a small cave. 

Rose glanced back toward the tunnel entrance once more, looking for signs of ginger hair, but finding none, ducked her head and slipped into the small cavern. 

The entrance was rather small, but once inside, the space opened up to at least a full story, so that Rose could stand upright. As she moved, motion sensors kicked into place and a string of old, yellowed lighting kicked on, powered by a source she could not locate.

As the cave around her was illuminated, her heart nearly stilled in her chest. 

It was a child’s hideaway, easily defined as such by the scribbled paintings on the black cave walls. Rose let out a long, low sigh of awe as she studied them. 

“Is that… is that a picture of a droid?” she whispered to herself, stepping closer toward the wall and crouching to it’s level, brushing one gloved hand along the stone. 

Many various pictures were painted there, all of a stick figure boy with a mop of orange hair and a tall, black droid figure with antennae coming off it’s head. There were scenes: the droid and the boy among flowers, the droid and the boy on the beach, the droid and the boy with something in their hands, sticks of some sort. 

Further in the cave were more drawings, a tall, slightly round stick figure with orange hair, a thinner stick figure with brown, and the boy, but the artist had scribbled over the taller figures’ faces viciously with a rock, so they were disfigured and messy.

Even deeper in the cave was a newer stick figure, all by itself, one with long yellow curls, holding one of the white star flowers, and the little orange-haired stick figure holding one, too. 

Rose covered her mouth with a hand, her eyes stinging with the threat of tears. 

How to equate the man she knew with the boy who had spent time in this cavern, she did not know. It was not easy to think of the two as the same, and perhaps they were not. The boy lived so long ago...

Rose mused over the evidence before her: Hux’s reaction when she’d seen him with the object of his father’s, the fact that his nanny was the one to accompany him to the cove, that his nanny was likely a droid, not even a person, and that he seemed to spend all of his time with it, and not his parents, the fact that the portrait of his parents had been scribbled out… 

Hux had been a lonely child. 

Rose turned eagerly to study the rest of the cave, her heart heavy with empathy. There was a little wooden shelf of sorts, built of driftwood planks and rocks. On top of each shelf were knick knacks and shells, sparkling rocks and bits of dried seaweed and moss, preserved shells of crustaceans and shards of green seaglass. 

Rose caressed them all, almost affectionately, kneeling on the cavern floor and studying each one as if they were clues to a mystery she hadn’t realized until now that she needed to solve. 

On the bottom level of the book case were dried out paints and a little spanner and sonic screwdriver, as well as some sort of small paneling from a ship that had been ripped out. In a large metal crate were parts and pieces, wires and strange odds and ends. 

It was easy to recognize a future engineer from such things, as her childhood room had looked much the same. 

Rose dug through them all, handling them reverently, locating a strange little droid that had been pieced together with fragments of metal and loose parts. It no longer worked and would not turn on, rusted with damp sea air. 

The idea of him, this stranger child, alone here, broke Rose’s easily empathetic heart. 

Where had his parents been? He had a father and mother, so why had they left him so alone? And who was the other figure, the blonde woman? 

She jumped at the sudden sound of someone calling her name, the rusty, old droid clattering to the cavern floor, parts of it snapping apart. Rose made a frustrated sound of regret as she scurried to pick up the pieces, trying her best to put them back together again. 

Regardless of how she felt about Hux, this place was sacred and she knew it. She shouldn’t be here and she shouldn’t have messed with his things. 

Her heart flew into her throat as the person calling her name came closer and a tall shadow ducked into the cave. Hux loomed before her. 

Rose felt her bottom lip quiver, the remains of that rusty little droid in her gloved palms. She stared up at him from her crouched position on the floor. 

His expression was pained, stiff, jaw clenched tight, and as he turned his gaze around the room, she could see the parts of him she’d grown to actually sort of like and appreciate shrinking smaller and growing more distant in his eyes. 

Rose could almost feel her heart break. 

Hux had many skeletons in his closet. He wasn’t just a man who made killing machines. He was a killing machine that had been made by someone else, some _thing_ else. 

They both took in a deep breath at the same time, and Rose lay the droid back in its box, pushed it under the shelf, and stood up rapidly, giving him a shaky smile. 

“Sorry… I saw-... I saw this place and-,”

“Why should it matter to me?” Hux interjected angrily, his voice shaking with fury. 

Emotionally intuitive, Rose turned to the side and averted her eyes to give his anger some privacy, and tried to do what she did best. 

“My room looked a lot like this,” she murmured, gesturing to the collection on the bookshelf, the odds and ends of tinkering tools. “As a kid, I mean.”

Hux audibly sighed behind her and stepped closer, his footsteps ringing out on the damp rock beneath their feet. 

“Guess it’s how you know an engineer before they become one,” she rambled slightly, desperately trying to relieve the awkward tension, unsure if she should run or continually apologize or needle him for more. 

Because what she had witnessed in this cave had made her very curious. 

Hux was close enough now she could almost feel him against her back. The sensation caused a tremor up and down her spine and her face to warm up. She tensed, and slowly turned to meet his eyes. 

“I told you to go back,” he uttered darkly, his expression much more controlled now that he’d been given time to wrangle it into submission. 

Rose studied his face, pondering his feeling, wondering what was churning behind that steel mask, what the root of his agony and vicious ruthlessness really was. 

“And I told _you_ to go on without me,” Rose murmured in return. “Why did you come back?”

She could tell his eye color even better from here, so close, in the dim ocean light coming in from the caves mouth. Seafoam green with just a hint of gray, so soft and lovely and subtle, but sharp, as he pierced her with his gaze. 

They seemed frozen in this moment, studying one another, unable to look away. 

Hux did not answer her question. Rose stepped closer to him. 

“Why are you so afraid to let people in?” she uttered accusingly. “Why the terror that I am here? What do you fear will happen?”

Hux breathed in sharply through his nose, his nostrils flaring just slightly, his jaw set tight. 

“Rose,” he uttered warningly, her name just a breath on his lips. 

“If this is the heart of it… if your father is the problem, if this place-”

“You know nothing!” Hux interjected furiously, shaking a hand in the air to emphasize his point. “You are a brilliant engineer wasting her talents on subpar technology on the losing side of the war. You have some small concept of the urgency that moves this war, yet you stand here in the rubble of my childhood and needle me, endlessly, on and on.”

“Is it so bad to want to get to know you?” Rose countered, now furious herself that he dared to raise his voice to her. “The first time we met you nearly executed me, now you’re… giving me tech and showing me oceans and I’d really just like to know why.”

“It’s none of your business,” Hux fumed, unconsciously lowering himself toward her, the pair of them stepping closer, ever closer, as they argued. “We have a job to do and you are continually distracting from the greater purpose.”

“I’m distracting?” Rose snorted derisively, mere centimeters from grabbing hold of his poncho. “You brought me to the beach. Is that part of our mission, Hux? Is it?”

“I-... it is-,” Hux spluttered, his face torn with fury. But her eyes were so close, filled with anger and scorn and so goddamn beautiful. Her lips moved and he was drawn to them, gazed at them as Rose nipped at the flesh of her bottom one and wet it eagerly with her tongue. 

“You’re angry because you have nowhere to hide,” she accused him, unconsciously studying his mouth, the deep frown, the shape of his full lips. “Because I’m learning that you’re not really this big, bad, scary creature that you long to be and that upsets y-”

Hux surged forward, ending her words with a crushing kiss to her lips. The passion of their anger overwhelmed them, and their teeth clashed, grunts of desperation and hungry need surging past their lips. Her hands were on him, all over him, running up his chest, gripping his shoulders, yanking him down, and she pressed into him, eagerly whining as he wrapped his arms around her and snaked his hands down her body, cupping her bottom and pulling her close. 

Rose coaxed his tongue from his mouth with a hungry moan, lust surging within her as she felt it slither against hers, wet and warm. Her hands found his hair, and Hux keened forward against her, the pair of them slamming back into the wall, as she ran her fingers through the orange tresses, eagerly mussing up that ridiculously perfect hairdo. 

She tugged on his lip, biting it just enough until he panted for mercy, then kissed him again, one hand migrating down to cup his cheek, feeling safe and comfortably nestled in his arms against the rock. 

The passion began to subside. Lips stinging and bright red, they broke apart, gasping for air, locked in one another’s arms. Yet when their gazes met, guilt appeared on both of their faces. 

Hux backed away quickly, lowering Rose to her feet on the floor, and both of them turned away from one another, straightening hair and clothing, wiping at mouths, parts of them throbbing and needy that were just fine before. 

They stood in silence amongst Hux’s childhood cave for a long moment. Then Rose, ever courageous, turned back to him with a tight frown. 

“That-... will never happen again,” she uttered tersely. 

“Agreed,” Hux nodded his assent, doing his best to fix a look of disgust on his face. 

They stared at one another a moment more. 

“Okay…,” Rose finally tore her eyes away and bustled out of the cave. “Back to-... to the ship.”

As Rose hurriedly emerged from the tunnel to the cove, Hux following reluctantly behind her, ramrod stiff and sour-faced, she spied Val on the horizon and broke off almost in a run to get to him, leaving Hux behind without a single word. 

As she approached him, Val nodded his head toward her but said not a word, instead turned toward the ship and lowered the ramp for Rose. They entered in silence and did not speak a single word until they had cleared the surface of Arkanis. 

As they lifted off the ground, Rose caught sight of Hux not very far away, standing with his arms folded, gazing up at their ship. Her cheeks blazed with warmth and she sank lower in the cockpit seat, pressing a hand over her eyes. 

“What a useless visit,” Val uttered tersely through clenched teeth. 

Rose was thankful she had something else to think about, and turned toward Val with concern on her face. 

“Was… Mitaka okay? Did you manage to work things out?”

Val did not respond immediately. He merely flipped switches and mashed buttons with unusually tense and jerking movements. 

“Val?” she prompted him softly, reaching out and placing a hand on his elbow. 

The young man jerked, the ship swaying as he pulled on the steering. He glanced back at her with a sheepish gaze, and shook his head. 

“I-... I’d rather talk about it later, if you don’t mind,” the man confessed, then turned his gaze back out the front viewport. 

Rose nodded, then stood up from her seat and made her way to the back of the ship. The journey wouldn’t be very long back to Ajan Kloss, but she needed some time to ponder what had happened. 

After many long minutes of laying on a cot and fretting about how she’d likely ruined everything about her intel relationship with Hux, desperately avoiding how she felt personally about the situation, she finally decided to focus on something a little more useful: data, the technological information he had given her, and how she could fix it. 

But as she tapped away on the datapad, Rose continually became distracted with thoughts of Hux. 

Why had he kissed her? Why did he take her to the beach? To a place that was obviously way too personal for him?

What was his childhood like? Why were his parents not involved in his life? Why did he grow up so lonely?

A quick holonet search gave her more answers than she wished to have. 

Brendol Hux had not been a good commandant at all. He was known for harsh behaviors with cadets, for pushing them past their limits. The things he had done were more cruel in nature than anything Rose could imagine; Brendol had coined the brainwashing tactics and the stealing of youths from young families. He’d forced them to fight one another, to beat one another into submission, to kill for his recognition and his favor. 

There were even rumors that Hux had subjected his own son to such training, and had been hardest on him above all. 

Rose turned off the datapad at the nausea churning in her stomach, closing her eyes against the spinning that was now present in her head. 

Suspicions confirmed. Hux’s father had not been good or kind or well meaning. 

He’d made Hux into what he was. 

“But he’s still responsible for his actions,” Rose whispered into the dark, feeling the overwhelming need to remind herself just how horrible he really was. 

Or, at least, had been…

Rose sat up quickly, pressing her face into her hands and massaging her skin, once more having to chase away the feeling of his lips on hers, the firm and desperate, hungry way in which he kissed her, the skittering of his hands down her body, the squeezing, needy way he pulled her close. 

Her body was still on fire. She needed a cool shower and a memory wipe. 

“Landing, Rose,” Val called from the cockpit.

“Thank kriff,” Rose swore and got to her feet, making her way toward the cockpit. She took her seat and buckled in, feeling more thankful than ever to see the surface of Ajan Kloss loom up in the viewport before them. 

“Do you require my services any further this evening?” Val requested of her as they stood and made their way down the ramp. 

“No,” Rose turned toward him, hesitant to release him to his own devices. He’d been pensive and drawn the entire flight back. 

It worried her. 

“Thank you,” Val uttered with a half smile, and before Rose could question him, he was gone. 

Rose was staring after him when she was startled by the sudden clap of a heavy gloved hand on her shoulder. She jumped and let out a little yell, swiftly turning and throwing a hand to her concealed blaster, but the individual was snickering now, face looming up out of the dark. 

“Finn?! Kriffing hell, I almost shot you,” Rose grumbled, but was rushing into his arms a second later. 

He enveloped her in a warm embrace, making a little sound of contentment. A strange sense of guilt overwhelmed her as she was reminded, again, of the man who held her much closer than this merely a few hours ago. She hoped Finn could not read evidence of it on her face. 

“You’ve already tazed me, let’s not get me shot, too,” Finn joked with a bright smile as they pulled apart. 

“When did you get back?” Rose demanded, but Finn was distracted from answering as two more individuals approached: Poe Dameron and Rey the Jedi. 

“Hey, Rose,” Rey uttered brightly, giving the smaller woman a bright wave. 

“Rey, Poe-... you-... you’re back from your mission already?” 

Poe gave Rey an oddly strained look, his brows high on his head, arms held out to his sides. 

“Somebody insisted on getting back here for some training, not like she needs it though,” he couldn’t resist from grumbling, even as Finn gave him a dirty look. 

Rey’s smile became strained. 

“I’ll be around base for a while,” Rey explained brightly. “I do need training, regardless of what Poe thinks. But it’ll be great to get to know you in the process, Rose. Finn says only great things.”

Finn frowned slightly, giving a hesitant chuckle, and Rose wondered if he was worried she’d take it the wrong way. It made Rose feel more awkward than anything.

“He’s a great friend,” Rose emphasized warmly. “I’m glad he’s back. I’m glad all of you are back.”

“Let’s get some grub. I’m famished,” Poe grumbled, looping an arm over Finn’s shoulders and tugging him toward the lit up mess tent. 

Rose watched as the pair of them stumbled along, one brow raised in curiosity, and followed along behind them. She stopped, however, when she realized Rey was not joining them. 

The other woman was looking out into the jungle, her eyes distant, as if focusing on something not quite there. SIlence descended between them, and somehow, strangely, even the wildlife in the jungle around them grew quiet. 

Rose shivered. 

“Rey…? Everything okay?”

Rey turned and nodded with a soft smile, the curls around her ears shaking slightly in the breeze. 

“I, uh... I need to go meditate. I’ll talk to you later, though. Nice to see you again, Rose.”

And just like that, Rey bounded into the depth of the jungle, fearlessly and without restraint, disappearing into the dark leaves. 

Rose studied the space she had been for a moment, admiring the young woman’s tenacity and questioning the oddity of those in tune with the Force, before she turned to join Finn and Poe in the mess tent. 

Back on the Finalizer, Hux was unpacking his things. Typically this was droid work, but he always handled his own laundry and domestic chores, finding the methodical folding and returning of items to their proper locations soothing and mind-numbing. He needed it, especially today of all days, as Mitaka had returned to the ship in tears and yet stoically refused to discuss what had happened. Despite himself, Hux had tried asking about the situation, but to no avail. 

Eventually, the Lieutenant had calmed himself and had flown silently the entire way back, saying very little as they parted in the turbolift on the _Steadfast_. 

Hux felt drained and exhausted more so now than he had in a long time. 

As he rummaged through his things, he located the flowers Rose had insisted he take. 

Since the flight, Hux had done a very good job of dismissing all thoughts of that frustrating little rebel from his mind, but at this none too subtle reminder, memories of her came flooding back, assaulting his senses. 

The feel of her curves beneath his gloved palms, the smell of her hair and her skin, the taste of her lips and the insistent way she kissed him and tugged on his hair, all had him nearly undone. He leaned forward helplessly, then sank to his seat on the side of the bed, head lowered between his shoulders as he studied the flowers in his hand. 

It had been a long time since Hux had allowed himself to make a mistake of such gravity. That one decision between the two of them could have reprehensible consequences bigger than just two people who did not like one another coming together romantically. 

It could ruin everything: his plans, the tentative nature of his existence within the First Order, with life. How could he be so foolish?

Hux hissed and tossed the flowers onto the bed, pressing his face into his hands and breathing deep, in and out, doing his best to think logically about the situation. 

But every time he tried to think of a way around it, a creeping memory of her taste, or her smell, or the sound of her voice, or her smile, would tiptoe across his mind and send him spiraling again. 

He needed to sleep. 

Grasping a handful of the flowers, trying and failing not to think of her pretty smile as she handed them to him ( _you struggle to sleep a lot. I can tell…)_ , Hux brewed himself a cup of tea and drank it, using the last of his waking strength to clear the bed of items and ready himself for sleep. 

As the drowsiness began to hit, with Millicent curled happily against his back in the bed and purring, his eyes wandered to the datapad laying on the side table beside the bed. 

As he studied it, unconsciously hoping that a message would come through, disappointed that it’s glassy surface stayed blank and message free, he drifted easily into sleep, coaxed by the effect of _sweet stars_. 

He slept easily, the first solid sleep he’d had in months, and dreamed of Rose, dreamed of watching her from afar as she worked in a lab, worked to undo each and every invention that he’d ever done. Hux absorbed her every move as she hummed and smiled through her labor, replacing parts in his machinery and schematics with pieces of stars, with white flower petals. 

When she was finished, she turned to him and her smile was warmth itself. 


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose and Hux avoid one another (for reasons), while Rose works on a new piece of technology.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to say that I appreciate each and every one of my readers SO MUCH, especially those of you who have shared a word or two in comments. You are the reason I can keep going with this story, thanks to your praise and interest and thoughts! I love hearing your own theories or ideas for why things happen, for Hux's relationship to his past, for Rose's thoughts as she gets closer to this prickly Arkanisian sea urchin of a man. I promise if you stay with me until the end it will be worth it! I have lots of things planned! 
> 
> To the lovely ladies who have helped me to beta ([Dianalynn1138](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dianalynn1138/pseuds/Dianalynn1138), [ ElfMaidenOfLight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElfMaidenOfLight/pseuds/ElfMaidenOfLight),  Huluppu) this piece, you are amazing and brilliant and smart and wickedly fantastic people and I cannot sing your praises enough. You deserve all the best in the world and anytime you need a favor, I'm there!

Armitage Hux always felt that the best thing for a distracted mind was more work. After the wonderful rest he’d had thanks to the sweet stars tea, he awoke more energetic and effervescent as ever, plunging himself immediately into the daily tasks ahead of him, not allowing himself even a split second to pause and think about a young woman by the name of Rose Tico. 

After a scarce breakfast of nutritive milk and a cup of tea, he carried himself confidently to his office, where he began to pore over the energy readings and function numbers of the  _ Supremacy _ . 

He was so entirely enthralled with his work that he pushed straight on through lunch, not even noticing when Lieutenant Mitaka missed his daily check-in, not even noticing that an alarm had malfunctioned outside in the hallway, ringing at an uncomfortably high octave. 

The General did not even notice that the communications link he shared with his spy handler in the Resistance was absolutely silent today. 

Instead, he focused solely on each task ahead of him, fulfilling each one to the letter, dotting every I and crossing every T, until a droid entered sometime in the evening hours to remind him that he had a personal meeting with Allegiant General Pryde. 

Hux did not allow himself a single second to slow down, but worked up until the very last millisecond that would still give him time to travel to Pryde’s office. Upon the appropriate time, he locked his office door and strode down the hall with confidence, hands clasped behind his back, chin up, nose pointed proudly in the air, sending lesser officers scurrying before him. 

This was General Hux in a good mood, and many began to discuss, when he was not aware, what could be the reason for such a change. 

Hux rapped his knuckles on the interior viewport outside of Pryde’s office. He could see through the transparisteel Pryde swiveling around in his office chair, his tired eyes narrowing with irritation at the man waiting for him at the door. 

He keyed the pneumatic door open from his desk and Hux entered, taking a seat without prompting across from the Allegiant General. 

Initially, neither of them spoke. Pryde kept his eyes downcast on the holotable before him, scanning through files. 

Hux swallowed just slightly, doing his best to examine the files Pryde was perusing from a distance, his expression stony. 

“You’ve been making many visits to Arkanis of late, General,” Pryde remarked after a moment. 

Hux resisted the urge to snort. This man was such a fool. If he thought he had him just because of his trips to his home planet, he was wrong. Hux had chosen Arkanis as an airtight alibi. 

“Yes, sir,” he uttered as amiably as he could sound without truly feeling it. “You know it is the place of my birth.”

Pryde raised his eyes up from the holopad, but not his head, narrowing a suspicious look upon him. 

“I do,” he said with a sigh and a nod. “But your father is dead and buried elsewhere. What business do you have there?”

“I am investigating claims into my inheritance, sir,” Hux answered with ease. 

Pryde looked up quickly, seeming shocked. “Oh?”

“Yes, sir,” Hux smirked with pride, folding his hands in his lap, trying his best to keep from looking too smug. “We are close to victory. The war will soon be over. I would like to have my future plans settled before it comes to a close. My father left clues as to a potential estate somewhere on the planet through the bloodline of my mother.”

“Ah, yes, that woman,” Pryde mumbled to himself as he turned back to his holotable, the answer satisfying his suspicions to be false. “It is too bad you cannot trace the lineage of a whore.”

Hux’s right hand curled into a tight fist, and his teeth clenched down so hard a sharp pain radiated through his jaw. His eyes glazed over with rage.

He forced himself to breathe in carefully. He would not give Pryde the satisfaction of riling him up. 

“I have… a few leads,” Hux uttered carefully, trying to remind himself to breathe normally and stay calm. “I feel confident I will locate the estate before too long.”

“Well, you don’t have much time,” Pryde countered with a wry lift of one eyebrow. “The end of the war approaches.”

The insult to his mother’s memory faded to the back of his mind; not forgotten, but a dull pain now held behind a curtain. All of his focus pinned down on this one phrase, this exciting morsel of information falling from Pryde’s mouth. 

Putting on his best performance, Hux allowed his lips to curve upward into a smug smile, seeming ever the smarmy Imperial loyalist. 

“Sir,” he uttered excitedly, leaning slightly forward and conspiratorially lowering his voice. “Have you heard word from Exegol?”

Pryde glanced over Hux and sighed, leaning backward in his chair and opening his mouth to speak, not hiding his reluctance, though he was forthcoming with Hux. 

His suspicions about the General were merely surface-level, then. 

“Yes, I have,” he uttered, stone-faced. “The Sith Eternal are nearly finished with their forces. They require minimal resources now to get the job done.”

Hux leaned back in his seat, a dark and twisted feeling taking up base in his gut. 

He wondered momentarily at the sensation. He’d never felt… guilt, or whatever this was, before. Certainly never when discussing war tactics. 

And yes, the ridiculous  _ Sith Eternal _ was ruining the war, ruining everything the First Order stood for by harkening back to old, ridiculous Empirical ideals, but still… 

His thoughts turned to Rose- beautiful, brilliant Rose with her large heart and opinionated mind. 

“This is fantastic news, Allegiant General,” Hux responded sharply, banishing her face from his mind, nodding enthusiastically toward Pryde. 

“Indeed,” Pryde agreed, though his tone did not change in the slightest. “Which is why I have a mission for you.”

“A mission, sir?” Hux parroted, laying the “kiss-ass” behavior on thick. It sickened him, but it was necessary. 

“To Canto Bight,” Pryde spoke distractedly, now beginning to rummage through some hanging files in the drawer of his desk. He pulled out a large datadisk and slid it into the appropriate slot on the side of his holo-table.The rotating planet of Cantonica appeared. Pryde fingered along the image and zoomed in upon a residence there. 

It was a mansion, as tall as it was wide, surrounded by elegantly landscaped gardens and guarded by twelve-foot tall marble columns, standing like sentries at the front. 

It looked more like a senatorial palace and less like a home, but Hux recognized it immediately as the personal residence of Borga, the head cartel-leader within Canto Bight, the one who owned the casinos, the race tracks, the dance halls: all of it. 

Hux made an expression of unpleasant distaste, not bothering to hide it from Pryde. One look from the Allegiant General and he released a scoffing laugh. 

“I know, he is a despicable creature, but it’s due to fools like him that we even have the funds and resources to maintain this never-ending war,” Pryde uttered consolingly, leaning back in his chair and resting his elbows on the armrests, his hands steepling before his chest. “You will attend the Bacchan Gala.”

“The Bacchan Gala?” Hux reiterated with disdain and pursed lips. “Whatever do I need to attend that for? Could we not just meet over dinner and strike whichever deal we need?”

Pryde leveled his strict gaze on Hux, one brow raising slightly. 

“I was under the impression that you desired further work for the Order. Is this no longer true?”

Hux knew better. This was a false mission, a pretense, merely; a babysitting gig. The Bacchan Gala was a party held by Borga every year, and was little more than a masquerade ball that ended in a drunken orgy, or worse. Borga was a Tof, a species from a neighboring galaxy, and brought with him to this one tales of beings larger than life, in which the only way to worship them was through drunkenness and slovenly behavior. 

It was a party, not a mission. And Hux’s job would be to make certain that Borga did not get too drunk and spill the beans on any First Order plans to every member in attendance. 

It was further punishment, not a reward. 

But Hux smiled and nodded once in assent. 

“Certainly, Allegiant General. What would you have me do?”

“There will be many members of our Funding Board present,” Pryde instructed in a hushed tone. “See that they all have a good time, encourage as many further deals as possible as a representative of the Order, and see that Borga does not loosen his tongue.”

Hux was mildly surprised to hear that he was also to persuade attendees to contribute to the Order. Perhaps Pryde was starting to trust in him, if only just a little bit. 

“Will I be provided with staff?” he questioned next, as was customary. 

Pryde shook his head, returning his attention back to the holotable, swapping out the Cantonica data disk for one with schematic files he was due to peruse. 

“That will not be necessary,” Pryde uttered, his tone exasperated, dismissive. 

Hux stood slowly and saluted, only out of required habit and definitely not out of respect. 

“Good day, Allegiant General,” Hux stated flatly, then turned and made his exit from the room. 

Only when he was back within the confines of his office did he drop his exterior facade. As he entered the room, he glared around at the cool, durasteel colors and the soft, white lighting, rubbing his temples with both gloved hands to help alleviate an oncoming headache. 

What an irritating end to a long and tiresome day. 

Even better, Hux found he had a message waiting for him on his datapad, the red notification light blinking from its location on the desk. 

Hux fought the urge to hurry toward it, to eagerly read what Rose Tico had to say, the memory of her lips still a sore spot. Instead, he concealed the datapad within the desk and got right back to work, ignoring the burning in his tired eyes, the throbbing against his skull, and the pressing curiosity of what she had to say to him. 

His work soon chased all his worry away, until his mind was a landscape of utter silence. 

Rose awoke the morning after Arkanis with a slight headache and lips that felt just a tad bit more swollen than they had the day before. She lay in bed for a while after her alarm, running her finger over her bottom lip, delighting in the slightly sore feeling, half-drowsy and not fully awake. 

When she realized what she had been doing, she shot up out of bed and hurried to get ready, reluctantly bringing her spy connection datapad along out of obligation.

After a quick stop at the mess tent for food and caf, Rose went immediately to her work station, slapping down the datapad in front of Eko. 

“Good morning, Eko,” Rose uttered brightly, determined to remain cheerful despite her heart’s propensity to sink back down after the events from the day before. 

“Hey, Rose!” Eko responded brightly, already reaching for the datapad with eager excitement. “Is the hidden data on this?”

“Yeah,” Rose answered messily after a bite of ration bread. “The informant gave me something else, too. If you wouldn’t mind, could you transfer that last file over to this data chip?”

Rose handed Eko the little green piece of hardware, who took it quickly and nodded. 

“Sure thing, boss lady.”

“You make my job so much easier,” Rose groaned. 

The Twi’lek woman grinned up at her. 

“If that’s true, you should buy Val and I a round of beer.”

Rose grinned and nodded as she backed away from the computer terminal area. 

“You know what? You both deserve it. That’s a promise.”

“Yes!” Eko celebrated as she hooked the data pad up to the portable holopad she preferred to use. 

“I’m gonna go check in with the General,” Rose told her with a smile and a wave. “Let Val sleep in, but if he isn’t here in an hour, you come get me, okay?”

“Sure thing,” Eko replied with a salute, eagerly turning back to her work. 

Rose was once more struck with gratitude that General Leia had decided to give her such a fabulous team. Without the pair of them, she would most certainly feel overwhelmed with terror and worry at the coming storm. 

Perhaps some of that worry was strengthened by guilt. That she had fraternized with the enemy in the worst way possible… 

Rose shook her head, chewing furiously at the last of her bread and chugging her hot caf, telling herself she deserved the pain as it scalded its way down her throat. 

Her last thought as she approached the command center in the middle of the cave was of Paige, and her beautiful brown eyes judging her from beyond the grave. The bread and caf in her stomach turned slightly sour.

“Commander D’Acy,” Rose called as she approached, eager to get her attention quickly and keep her mind off her guilty thoughts. “Have you seen the General?”

D’Acy turned and examined Rose through pinched eyes, her smile slight on her face, and nodded warmly, pointing back over her shoulder toward the cave mouth. 

“She’s in the jungle with Rey,” the Commander alerted her, turning her attention back to the datapad in her left hand. “Uh- before you go, dear…”

D’acy called Rose back as she turned away. 

“Yes?” Rose replied, turning back with a surprised look on her face. 

“I was wondering,” D’Acy began, approaching Rose with a hopeful look on her face that was otherwise covering one of strained worry, much like how many Resistance members were looking lately. 

The heat beneath them was turning up, the scent of impending war hanging in the air. 

“I was wondering if you might be working on a project, at the moment,” D’Acy danced around outright asking, alluding to Rose’s current potential inventions. 

Rose felt another pang of guilt. She’d had less time to focus on inventions lately, spending more of her time trying to whittle information out of Hux. 

“Uh-... I have something on the table, Commander,” Rose answered honestly, then finished up with a mini-lie. “It’s almost done, I promise.”

D’Acy’s face brightened considerably. 

“Oh, well. Good then. As you were,” D’Acy dismissed her and turned back to her work, leaving Rose to wander away, her stomach bubbling slightly with more worry. 

It hadn’t been a lie so much as a promise to herself. Hux had given her the tracking program. It was her responsibility to have it shredded and conquered as soon as humanly possible. 

Just one little check in with the General and then she could get to work…

But as Rose traipsed through the jungle, finding no sight nor sound of Leia, she began to wonder if it weren’t more prudent to skip the check-in altogether and just get straight to work.

“General Leia,” Rose called out, not bothering to keep quiet, her boots stomping through ferns and leafy underbrush. “It’s Rose, where are you?”

After ten minutes of searching, Rose clenched her fists with exasperation and turned back, heading back toward the sounds of base camp, easy to follow in the quiet of the jungle. 

“Rose,” someone called to her in a partial whisper. 

The young woman stopped and turned, spotting the General’s kind face hovering just above some bushes to her right. She grinned at the sight and stepped closer, keeping her voice to a whisper as she approached. 

“What’s going on? I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” she said. 

Leia made an apologetic face and waited for Rose to make her way around the greenery, gesturing toward the form that was in the center of the cleared area ahead. 

Rose stared in amazement as Rey floated at least three feet off of the ground, her legs and arms folded in a meditative pose. Her eyes were closed, face blank and serene as she focused on connecting with the Force. 

Rose could not help but study her in awe, never having seen something so fantastical. Her arms pimpled with gooseflesh at the unnaturalness of it all. 

“Whaaaaaat is she doing?” Rose said quickly, looking to Leia for answers. 

The older woman smiled deeply and folded her hands over her grey gown, her large, blue-stoned ring glinting in the sunlight. 

“Meditating,” Leia explained simply. “Focusing on her connection with the Force. She has a large task ahead of her.”

Something about the way Leia said this, her tone tending on the edge of sorrow, indicated that the two women were involved in something much bigger than the war. 

Something to do with the Force. 

Rose felt her stomach settle for the first time that morning, somehow feeling at peace in this serene circle, with Rey not two yards away, one with the Force, and as such, the entire galaxy. She could not help but watch her out of curiosity, folding her arms over her chest, forgetting the entire reason she’d come into the jungle in the first place. 

“It’s great we have her on our side,” Rose mumbled after a moment. 

“Perhaps,” Leia uttered strangely in response. 

Rose raised a brow at this. She couldn’t think of a reason why having Rey on their side would be a bad thing. But then again, maybe she didn’t know everything about the situation. 

She sighed, wishing she could stay and witness such a peculiar and ancient tradition, but she had her own job to do. She turned to the General, feeling a sharp stab of guilty pain again as she realized she could not tell her everything about her trip to Arkanis. 

Not the part at the end, anyway… 

She shuddered to think what Leia would say. 

“I-... met with the informant yesterday,” Rose muttered quietly, keeping her tone even so as not to distract Rey. “He has given us all the current weapons and tech data the First Order possesses. My team and I are moving into the engineering process of the assignment you gave me.”

“That is fantastic news, Rose,” the General uttered warmly, her face glowing with pride and happiness. “I knew I could count on you. Do you need anything to progress?”

“Not for now,” Rose shook her head emphatically. “But I’ll let you know. I wanted to inform you before I got to work today.”

Leia nodded, reaching out a hand and squeezing Rose on her upper arm, an affectionate gesture. 

“You are so important to the Resistance, Rose. I hope you know that,” she emphasized with a light smile. “Not only your brilliant tech work, but even your spy handling.”

“The handling, ma’am?” Rose spoke a little too loudly, surprised, and Leia hushed her with a flat palm. “Sorry.”

“Yes, the handling,” Leia confirmed with a nod. “General Hux, Rose… that is a big catch, and you’ve managed to convince him to switch to our side, and stay there. He is a brilliant engineer himself, and having him in the Resistance… it’s a big deal.”

“But he’s not even  _ in _ the Resistance-,” Rose broke off, shaking her head, confused. “Leia, he… he’s a murderer, he’s killed… so many people for the First Order. Surely this doesn’t absolve him.”

Leia looked at Rose for a moment, her expression slowly changing into one deeply sorrowful and broken. Rose watched, stunned silent, as the older woman turned to stare at Rey, her expression lost. 

“... so has my son.”

Rose instantly regretted saying anything. How could she forget Kylo Ren was Ben Solo?! 

It was obvious that Leia still loved him, the heartbreak plain on her face. 

Did she want Kylo.. Ben to come back home? Even now?

“Forgive me, General,” Rose murmured softly, lowering her head and clenching her fists. “I should probably return to work.”

“Yes, thank you, Rose,” Leia nodded, giving her a soft smile, tinged slightly with her leftover sorrow. 

Nothing was better than the distraction of a project, especially from one’s own consuming guilt and anxiety. Rose spent hours in her office area with Eko and Val, who had finally turned up looking hung over and exhausted. He ignored the pair of them by listening to private music with his comms link earpiece. 

The rest of the world tuned out as Rose pored obsessively through chains of code and data, pausing every now and then to mumble to herself in awe at how clearly detailed and intricately woven the program was. 

As she studied it, picked it to pieces, she started to recognize minor flaws in the coding, little holes here and there, but always there was a redirect, a loophole over the loophole, a covering, and each of these were immaculately structured, utter perfection down to the letter. She could recognize patterns within the different codings, much like different hand-writing, and in a few hours had a working hypothesis that the less than perfect code had been written by Hux’s engineering team.

The perfection? That was all him. 

Rose forgot her irritation with him- and herself- as she marveled over it, feeling a burning appreciation in her belly for how brilliant and genius this program was. She spent far too much time sifting through it, at one point becoming so obsessed with it’s beauty that she simply tiptoed down along each strand, examining and admiring it’s architectural brilliance. 

When she had gleaned the entire thing, start to finish, she sat back, the datapad held low in her lap, and stared at it in wonder. 

This program had been used to hunt the Resistance down, to chase them onto Crait until they were scattered into broken pieces. 

Rose had been so close to dismantling it not very long ago, before being captured and held captive at the feet of the genius who designed it. 

She wanted to hate him, as she had before, but all she could feel was wonder, as her cheeks warmed and her head spun from the dizziness of his intellect. 

The hands that had input this very code into a computer system had been on her.

The lips that spoke it into existence had touched hers…

“I need a break,” Rose announced to her team, laying the datapad down on the table and standing up, stretching her arms high over her head with a groan. “Either of you wanna come?”

Eko looked up from her work and shook her head, looking back down immediately, and Val did not respond, lost in the music. 

“I guess I’m on my own,” she murmured, and left the area to go on a walk. 

She was not abandoning her work, but rather using the motion and commotion around her to focus and hone her mind. She used to do something like this with Paige when she was little: after hours of working on a project, her brain stumped at a certain point and unable to progress, Paige would offer a distraction, and the girls would wander down to the older, abandoned mines and play in the little ponds made by the broken pressurized steamers.

Rose filed through memories of her sister as she moved through crowds of busy-bee soldiers, a pang in her heart as she wished, for the first time in a while now, that Paige was still here with her today. She imagined a conversation…

_ Everyone’s counting on me, Paige. I don’t know what to do.  _

Paige would smile.  _ Rose, just do what you do best. _

_ And what do I do best?  _

_ There’s no hate in your heart. So why would you turn that on yourself? Relax, and trust that you have the skill. The answer will come to you. _

Paige had said that exact thing to her before, and Rose paused beneath the shady wing of an X-Wing as the memory washed over her.

_ There’s no hate in your heart. _

Paige was right, unfortunately, but that didn’t mean Rose wasn’t foolish, as the events of the day prior proved. 

She found herself pondering Hux again, and that beautiful cove beach, the sound of the waves, his voice. 

She closed her eyes and could hear it all, see it, smell it. 

The pictures he had drawn as a little boy were burned into the back of her eyelids. 

Perhaps some small part of Hux had wanted her to know, unconsciously. Maybe… he wanted her to see that he hadn’t always been so bad. 

A niggling thought tickled in the back of her mind. She chewed at her lip, mulling it over. 

The hyperspace tracking worked purely by slight chance and mathematical algorithm. It calculated the angle of the ship, the speed, the rate at which the vessel was launching into hyperspace, as well as the closest known Resistance or Rebel base within the categorically stored data in the First Order’s database. 

It worked by predicting where the tracked vessel was likely to end up… 

Like Hux, unknowingly guiding her to that cove… 

Her heart burned with some small affection in her chest, chased by a sudden realization of scientific proportions. In one sharp, clarifying moment, the solution to her problem fell into place. Rose pressed a hand over her mouth to conceal the shout that threatened to escape.

Rose turned and broke into a run, scurrying past some pilots who were trying to lift a fuel hose up into the X-Wing she had taken shelter under. 

She scampered into the office space within the cave and fell onto her crate seat, scooping up the datapad, ignoring Eko’s question of “What’s your hurry?”

“ _ There are so many options,” _ Rose thought to herself as she frantically scrambled to insert data into a predictive program. 

The Resistance could create some sort of server blocker, that when, within a certain radius of their ships, the First Order would be unable to access the server on which the data for the algorithm was stored. 

Positives: They would be unable to track from close quarters, like they had on Crait. 

Negatives: Could potentially track from a distance, even though the tracking would be less accurate, as the position and speed data harvested off the Resistance ship would be harder to ascertain. Also, a server blocker would take a lot of power to be able to project a circumference around the ship to be useful. 

Rose reasoned through the next option: The Resistance stopped using old Rebel bases. If it wasn’t on the First Order’s data list, like Ajan Kloss wasn’t, then they wouldn’t be able to find them. 

Nothing but negatives here: sometimes Rebel bases were useful when on the run. 

The third option was Rose’s favorite, especially because it was most like the baffler. TIE tracking systems utilized ion blasts from Resistance ships to follow and track. The baffler she had invented concealed those blasts, thus rendering their tracking equipment unusable. 

BUT, if Rose could somehow  _ reverse _ that effect, and create a system that would, instead of concealing ion blasts, create MORE of them, and radiate a heat energy signal off the charts of readability, then the First Order would only be able to rely on the known Rebel bases closest to their imminent location. They could not predict how far the Resistance ship was going to travel. 

They could go anywhere. The First Order would likely choose the closest base in their databank, giving the Resistance time to light speed jump two locations away, potentially even three. 

“Take THAT, HUX!” Rose shouted at the top of her lungs, slamming the datapad down on the table and jumping to her feet with a shout of excitement. 

The closest stations within the cave silenced immediately, and everyone within listening distance turned toward her, eyes wide, eyebrows raised, some with amused expressions on their face. 

Rose smoothed her fingers over her hair and sank back to a seat, staring wide-eyed at the datapad, her mouth split in a huge grin. 

Both Val and Eko stopped working and were watching her, Eko with a similar look of excitement, Val with a look of confusion as he slowly pulled the comms device from his ear. 

“Did you fix it?” Eko asked conspiratorially, her yellow eyes bright with anticipation. 

“Hyperspace tracking?” Val questioned, perking up as well, his lips pulling into a smile. “Wait, you figured it out already?”

Rose laughed at his attitude, glancing out the mouth of the cave to find that night was falling already, so it hadn’t been too quick of a fix. But she nodded happily, taking a deep breath before reaching for the datapad again. 

“But the work isn’t over. It’s just a theory. We’ll have to process the technology, run non-invasive tests, but if nothing proves dangerous, we can load it up onto the Falcon and have Poe play as bait to test it out for real.”

“Damn, Rose,” Eko laughed, getting to her feet and coming around to look at the program play-back on the datapad, clapping a hand down on her Liutenant General’s shoulder. “You’re wicked good at this.”

“Thanks!” Rose beamed, her arms shaking slightly as she thrummed with excitement. 

“Congratulations,” Val uttered warmly, his expression soft. 

Rose pressed her lips together and thanked him as well, returning to her datapad as Eko went back to her seat. 

She knew then that she would work through the night, as electric as she was feeling. 

This was a fantastic breakthrough, despite merely being a working theory. But if she could manage to pull this off… 

The Resistance would be that much safer. 

Rose pressed her palm over the pendant hanging against her chest, suddenly feeling a little overly emotional. 

As she clicked open the datapad, Rose could hardly help herself, and before she knew it, she was opening the scrambled chat she shared with  _ the spy _ ,sending him her first message since their last rendezvous. 

**Thornflower:** I did it. I cracked your code. 

Without bothering to wait for a response, feeling rather smug and content with herself, imagining the look of frustration on his face, Rose got to work on creating the first prototype of her anti-hyperspace tracking device. 

It was around midnight when Hux began to feel exhausted. He’d used too many stims to force himself to push through the day’s work, so he could have no more. He’d even run out of work in the last two hours, especially now that he was basically pushed to the side within the Order, only in charge of basic functions. 

He found himself turning to the known knowledge of  _ the baffler _ , examining the archive stores of the First Order servers and poring through all current facts about the invention. 

Curiously enough, though this invention of hers reminded him of her, his mind was blissfully blank of their mistaken tryst the afternoon prior. Rather, he focused on interpreting her intellect, examining the strength of her work and seeking flaws. 

Hux was impressed to find very few, almost none at all, and the flaws which he did notice could potentially be due to the lack of data on the Order’s part, not a flaw in the machinery itself. 

His heart swelled slightly at the realization that, in order for Rose Tico to have pulled this off, she would need to have an extensive knowledge of mechanical engineering, physics, and the function of heat and energy. 

She would have been utterly invaluable on the Starkiller Project, ironically the one thing she would rather die than support. 

If only he had found her  _ before _ the war had begun…

Her mind was magnificent, and with that he could not argue. But as he acknowledged this truth within himself, his own mind decided to begin to pile on all the other things that were magnificent about Rose Tico: her smile, her fortitude, her strength and stamina, her courage and bravery, her lips…

Hux got to his feet quickly, disgusted with himself, and reached for the datapad within the desk, tucking it under his arm. As he prepared to leave the office for the evening, he found himself reciting the speech he had written and given not too long ago, standing on the surface of planet Ilum, before Starkiller had been fired and in one swoop, took out the senate. 

The familiar lines soothed him, and helped him to focus on why he really needed Rose Tico. 

The Order must be salvaged. The Order must be saved. 

Hux readied himself for bed, the datapad forgotten on his nightstand, and spent a few minutes with Millicent; fed her, brushed her, and when he could barely keep his eyes open, he finally turned to his bed. 

He climbed beneath the black sheets, sinking his head onto the pillow, frustrated to find that, like usual, the moment he was in the soft and luxurious comfort of his bed, his energy renewed, and his eyes would not remain closed. 

He stared into the dark like this for half an hour, furious with himself, swearing for the millionth time that he would never again use stims to push himself through work, as they were the likely culprit for his lack of sleep. 

Too irritated to get up and fetch the old datapad given to him by Sloane, he reached instead for the one closest to him, and froze as he opened it up to find the message he’d ignored waiting for him there on the screen. 

**Thornflower:** I did it. I cracked your code.

Hux’s stomach made an excited loop within him, and he sat up immediately in bed, staring at the message. Beside himself, his lips cracked just slightly into a little smile, and before he could reason through what he was doing, he rummaged within the drawer of the night table for their private comms link and activated the call. 

It was a few beeps across the galaxy before Rose answered. He could tell by the way that she breathed in before stating his code name that she was feeling entirely too smug for herself. 

“Gingersnap,” Rose stated, her tone edging along playful. 

He could hear the scraping of metal against metal, and she inhaled deeply, sniffing in and puffing out air as she worked something manually. 

Hux’s slight smile stayed in place. 

“Working through the night, I see. Or is it not sleep time on your planet?”

“Nice try,” Rose grunted between gasps as she struggled with turning something heavy. “I still don’t trust that you won’t send an attack force to our base.”

“I could have done that long ago,” Hux muttered. “It’s obvious that you’re on Ajan Kloss.”

Stunned silence on the other side of the comms line. 

Hux’s smile turned into a pernicious smirk. 

“I hate you,” Rose muttered half-heartedly, returning back to her work. “But boy did you make a mistake giving me that tracking data. You’re so over.”

“On the contrary,” Hux countered, settling back against the pillows on his bed, eyes gazing up at the durasteel ceiling as he tried to imagine her red faced and puffing, hair clinging to the sweat on her cheeks, straining away with her new invention. “I’m quite excited to see what you’ve come up with.”

Silence on the other end of the line again, this one pregnant with feeling. 

Hux’s smile vanished, stomach roiling with taut nausea as he was reminded, yet again, of how he was playing with fire. 

_ Stupid and foolish _ …

“Can you guess how I did it?” Rose finally spoke on the other line, forcing her voice to remain level. 

“Hmmm,” Hux mused aloud, his mind lightning fast as he moved through all the variables. “The simplest solution would be to hack our data systems and simply avoid any bases we could predict you jumping to, but you’ve already done that, as you’ve settled on a planet we currently are unaware of.”

“ _ You’re _ aware,” Rose grumbled angrily, grunting again as she strained with her labor. “Tell me, Hux. Do I need to tell my side we gotta evacuate the planet?”

Hux fell quiet, thinking it over. He’d been tempted, the first time he’d discovered their location. It was simple, really. Trace the comms call to her general location, then examine any nearby planets for jungle ecosystems; information she’d let slip in one of their calls. 

He’d known for a while, but he hadn’t told anyone. It still suited him to have the Resistance on his side. 

Or at least that’s what he told himself. 

Hux ignored her question. 

“The next option would be to block the servers, or even hack and scramble them,” Hux went on. 

Rose stopped working again, letting out an exhausted sigh as she leaned upon the object she was manipulating. 

“I actually hadn’t thought of that last one. Know any good hackers we could employ?” Rose asked. 

“I know one, but he isn’t very loyal.” 

“Ugh, that guy…” A shriek of scraping metal came through on the other end of the line. 

“But the best option would be similar to your baffler,” Hux offered. 

Rose stilled once more on the other side of the line. Even her breathing grew soft. 

“Are you familiar with my baffler?” 

But Hux was suddenly not interested in teasing her about her inventions. 

She had earned his respect, one engineer to another. 

“I’ve examined it,” Hux uttered, hesitant to sound too enamored. “It’s really a rather genius piece of machinery.”

Rose’s breathing changed again, a little faster, shallower. She let out a quiet laugh to conceal it. 

“Well… imagine what I could have done with Starkiller.”

“I have.” The words were out of his mouth before he could think better of it. 

Silent tension filled the distance between them once more. 

Hux listened to the sound of her breathing, now gentle and still since she’d ceased working. It filled the crevices within him with warmth, and he rolled onto his side in his bed, closing his eyes for just a moment. 

“It’s late,” he uttered. “I understand you will likely be up until dawn with your plans, but… rest is imperative for a soldier.”

“I’ll try,” Rose conceded, returning back to her manual labor. “Let me know if anything comes up, okay?”

“I will,” Hux replied. “Signing off.”

“Signing off,” Rose repeated. The comms call clicked off. 

Hux rested the datapad and comms device on the side table beside the bed, laying on his back and staring up at the ceiling in the dark.

Thanks to him, Rose seemed very busy now, her hands full of projects, so many that Hux actually felt envious of her. Devoid of a team and a lab, there wasn’t much Hux could do for the First Order now that Pryde had given such power to the bloody  _ Sith Eternal _ . 

“Fool,” Hux grumbled. 

For just a moment, as he lay in the dark, doing his best to fall asleep, Hux pondered exactly what it might be like to be on  _ her _ side of the war, to be next to her in a lab, as in his dream the night prior, working together to make something magnificent. 

He was afraid of how much the image excited him. 

But the Order came first: now and forever. 

The First Order must be saved. 

  
  
  



	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose and Hux get a little closer, until they don't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to ElfMaidenofLight and Dianalynn for beta-reading for me!!

It took Rose a few days to perfect her anti-hyperspace tracking device; four long, hard days during which she got very little sleep and even less nutrition, so engrossed was she with her work. 

The only times she would intentionally take short breaks were for naps, fresher use, caf, and the time it took for her to locate her comms link and answer the calls from their spy: General Armitage Hux. 

Rose knew why he was calling: he was bored, no real work of his own to complete within the Order now that he’d been demoted,  _ and _ she was handling one of his inventions. She understood the curiosity. 

It certainly had nothing to do with the mistake they’d made on Arkanis at the beginning of the week. With  _ the kiss _ …

But that memory had almost left both of their minds as he riddled her with questions hour after hour, seeming to test her authority. 

“What about the spark plugs? Do you have a plan for them?” he asked near the end of one of their calls, in reference to a troubleshooting issue she’d mentioned the day prior. 

“Will you shut up, Ginger?” Rose muttered, rolling her eyes, though her lips were pulled into a slack smile. “I know what I’m doing, and honestly… I don’t need your help.”

Hux had become so accustomed to these conversations with her, seated in his office and filing through paperwork, that he no longer corrected her for not using his full codename. He barely even noticed. 

“What was that sound? Be careful,” Hux snapped, when a pressurized gasket was turned too tight, resulting in a loud  _ pop _ of an explosion and Rose squealing at the top of her lungs as she dived beneath the table. 

The next sound she made had Hux’s heart stiffening in a tight spasm and his lungs struggling for breath. 

She was laughing, the sound pure and loud, her knees scuffing along the ground as she shuffled from out of her hiding place, grunting with the effort it took to pull herself to her feet. 

“Oops,” she muttered, and the tinkling of metal on metal could be heard, as well as a retreating hiss as she tightened the gasket correctly this time. 

“Please tell me the Resistance can afford proper protective gear,” Hux muttered quickly as his breathing returned to normal. 

His face felt hot, but he ignored it. 

“Why?” Rose asked, her voice taking on a hint of playfulness. “You worried about me?”

“I’m worried the project will not be completed if the engineer in charge of it loses an arm,” Hux sidestepped the landmine of a question with ease, his brows knitting together. 

Rose fell silent on the other end of the line. 

“So either you care about me or you care about the Resistance,” she noted in a sing-song voice. “Miracles  _ do _ happen.”

It took Hux a millisecond longer to come up with an appropriate comeback, and Rose noticed. 

“I-... care about science,” he uttered firmly. 

“Sure,” Rose bravely teased, now so accustomed to his presence in her ear she felt no qualms of speaking her mind. 

In fact, if she was being honest with herself, Rose preferred the hours working with him rather than those she worked by herself. Even if she would never admit it. 

“I think-...,” Rose mumbled softly, running her fingers over the surface of the device she’d created, her breath bated with excitement. “I think it’s done.”

Hux listened to her marvel over the device, noted the pace of her breathing, the whine of excitement as she worked herself up into a happy shout. 

“It’s finished!! It’s ready to test!”

Hux’s hands stilled on the surface of his desk, his lips pulling into a small smile as he stared into the middle distance, his mind forming an image of Rose, oil on her face, hair askelter, but beaming and happy, wiping sweat out of her eyes with a hand bound in one of  _ his _ gloves. 

His stomach turned over slowly. 

“Well done,” he praised her softly, something tight and worrisome in his chest in how she’d take this compliment. 

She breathed out the tiniest gasp, a happy sound implying a smile. 

“Thanks,” she returned just as softly. 

The moment swelled with emotion, too much for comfort, and Hux cleared his throat. 

“Which lucky Resistance hero gets to test your product?”

“Your favorite,” Rose chuckled. “He’s the best pilot we’ve got.”

Hux made a disgusted face, leaning over the desk on one arm.

“You’re allowing that imbecile to be the first pilot to best my tracker?” he uttered accusingly. 

Rose laughed, a sweet, musical sound. 

“When the war is over, I’m telling him you said that.”

Silence fell between them once more. 

When the war was over? 

When the war was over, Hux would turn on them. That was the plan. It was always the plan. Let the Resistance take care of the bloody  _ Sith Eternal _ and then wipe out whatever was left of them. 

Hux tried to imagine standing on the bridge of the  _ Steadfast  _ and ordering his subordinates to fire, knowing that the vessel he was downing was carrying the only other engineer in the world who’d been able to capture his interest with her intellect, Rose Tico.

His mouth went dry. 

The pneumatic door connecting his office to the main hallway outside swished open, and Hux swiftly slid the datapad into the drawer of his desk and got to his feet, saluting as the Allegiant General stepped in. 

This was the first time since he’d agreed to help the Resistance that he felt genuine fear of getting caught. An acidic taste burned in the back of his mouth, and Hux struggled to keep his face free of concern, all the while fully aware that Rose was still on the other line of the comms, and Hux had no way of turning it off without drawing attention to the device in his ear. 

A bead of sweat dripped down his back. 

“Gingersnap, you still there?” Rose asked in his ear, a note of concern in her voice. 

“Allegiant General,” Hux uttered clearly to both greet his superior and to warn her, his voice smarmy with respect. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

Pryde cocked a brow as he examined the General before him, his hands tucked behind his back, that long, black riding crop gripped firmly between his fingers jutting out the sides of his frame. 

“You do not need to pretend you are happy to see me, General,” Pryde uttered honestly. 

Hux kept his facial expression even as he allowed a curious quirk of his brow. 

“No inferior loves to have his superior snoop around his office,” Pryde explained, then motioned toward the still open doorway, moving his fingers in a “come hither” gesture. 

A laundry droid glided gracefully into the room and lowered a stack of neatly folded and pressed black clothing. The smell of steam and starch filled the air, indicating it had been freshly laundered. 

“I’ve brought your dress uniform for the Bacchan Gala, tailored to match your measurements. See that it remains perfect until the event”

“Thank you, sir,” Hux uttered automatically with a respectful nod. “I will.”

“You will take your man, that Lieutenant… what’s his name?”

“Mitaka, sir,” Hux replied, elegantly concealing his distaste that Pryde did not even know the names of every single one of his subordinates upon the ship. 

Hux knew them all and he was only a General. 

“Yes, him. He will transport you to Canto Bight, though you are required to remain overnight as is tradition for Borga’s guests.”

Hux made a face and hissed out a low breath, one Rose responded to with a curious tut of her tongue on the other side of the line.

He had not wanted Rose to know about this mission of his, and even worse, he did not want to stay overnight at that ridiculous party. 

“But, sir,” Hux countered quickly. “Why need I stay the night? No deals will be struck past a waking hour.”

“Many deals can be struck past a waking hour,” Pryde responded with a sneer and curl of his lip. “You depart the day after tomorrow. Be prepared.”

The Allegiant General swept from the room, the droid following, and the pneumatic door whished shut after him. Hux was surprised Rose was not pebbling him with questions, as he strode to the door and locked it. 

But as he moved back toward his desk to retrieve the datapad, she spoke up. 

“What the kriff was that-,”

“Hush,” Hux uttered sharply, more than willing to cut the line and sever their connection if she did not obey. 

But, wonder of wonders, she did, and Hux held his breath as he moved through his protective programs, checking that all lines of communication in and out of his office were still secure and that Pryde had not planted a bug. 

When complete, he let out a heavy breath and sank to a slumped seat on his desk, holding one gloved hand to his ear as he contemplated ending the line with Rose anyway, unwilling to face her questions. 

But something within him made him stay on. 

“It is safe now,” he spoke quietly, relief evident in his tone. 

“That was Pryde…,” Rose muttered. It wasn’t a question. 

“Are you in a secure location?” 

“Oh, yeah,” Rose nodded, even though he couldn’t see. “When I heard… what was happening I moved to my bunk.”

Hux’s thoughts were rapidly flipping through every next move he could take, what he could say, how he could remove her interest from this damnable party, but the next words out of her mouth derailed his plans. 

“What’s the Bacchan Gala?”

Hux rolled his eyes and got to his feet, deciding to call it a day. He gathered his datapad and swept from the office into his quarters, desperately longing for a drink. 

“Would you trust me, Rose, if I refused to answer that question?”

“Hey, you can’t use my name,” Rose pounced on this immediately, as Hux had intended, and relief flooded him as she laughed teasingly. “You freaked out on me the first time I did it.”

“Well, you’re not on a billion holonet search lists now are you?”

“Are you using your fame against me? Cause you’re famous for some pretty gross stuff,” Rose countered, dread in her voice. 

Hux felt a sharp pang of disappointment but forced himself to ignore it. 

“Listen,” he began gently, bending down to scratch Millicent behind the ears as she strolled up to sit beside his boot. “It’s been a long day, so why don’t we-,”

“What’s the Bacchan Gala?” Rose repeated simply. 

Hux ground his teeth together. 

“I will not-,”

“I know you don’t want to tell me but I’m just going to keep asking,” Rose interrupted him defiantly. “What is it?”

Hux’s face resembled that of someone who had just inhaled the scent of something incredibly foul. He took a deep breath, then crossed to sink onto his ice-blue sofa, resigned. 

“A party thrown by a very rich cartel leader,” Hux did his best to give her sufficient details without revealing anything too important. “I was invited.”

Rose snorted sarcastically. 

“How insulting that you think I’m stupid enough to believe that,” Rose countered, her voice raising an octave. “Are you withholding important information from me? As a spy, it is your duty-”

“You are my handler,  _ not  _ my leader,” Hux hissed out between his clenched teeth. “Do I need to send you an itemized schedule of my daily activities?”

Rose almost paused on the way he said ‘schedule’, like ‘shed-ew-ull’, something about the accent endearing, but she blazed past it, too furious to care. 

“This is an  _ Order mission _ , Hux. It’s obviously important. Why is Pryde sending you to this party?”

Hux could not tell her. He absolutely could not tell her. This was his last card to play. If he told her, he was out of options, and if he did decide to betray the Resistance, if they knew this piece, they may forfeit the war entirely. Going up against  _ him _ was absolute suicide.

Hux’s thoughts screeched to a halt. 

_ If…? If _ he decided to betray them? 

A feeling similar to panic but much more vitriolic in nature threatened to overwhelm him. 

“Hux?” Rose prompted him. 

Already she had said his name twice, she was breaking protocol, she was pushing too far. 

“Signing off,” Hux uttered briskly, and ended the comms call. 

Across the galaxy, on Ajan Kloss, Rose swore and snatched her pillow from the bed, putting it over her face before screaming into the fluffy substance, muting her cry. 

She flopped down onto her bunk, furious and enraged, her eyes rimmed with unshed tears. 

Rose felt personally betrayed, let down, deceived, and she knew why, too. 

She’d forgotten exactly who she was dealing with: General Armitage Hux, Starkiller, the murderer, the war machine made by endless decades of war machines before him. 

He wasn’t Armitage Hux of Arkanis, with ocean eyes, warm lips, and an inventor's heart. 

Once upon a time, he might have been, if those pivotal years had been manipulated differently. He was still the same man who lifted her face with his finger while she lay prostrate at his feet, too proud to think she could do him any harm. 

Well, she’d shown him then. She’d show him again. 

Rose took some time to clean up in the women’s communal fresher and fill her gnawing stomach with some food, leaving the datapad Hux had given her back in her bunk room. She was furious with him and thus refused to be at his beck and call. 

She hoped that he’d try to get in contact with her again this evening, just to know he’d be frustrated beyond belief that he could not. 

Rose thought she’d been figuring him out, thought that perhaps the unimaginable was happening, and that Hux was coming around to the right side, the good side, the side of rebellion and freedom and democracy. 

But now he was keeping secrets. 

Her stomach turned over as she realized that he knew so much about the Resistance. He could be marching into Pryde’s office right now to confess that the known location of the last of the Resistance was Ajan Kloss.

It was enough to make Rose want to crawl back to the datapad and make nice with him. 

She was saved from this unsavory notion by Finn, who spotted her from across the mess hall and made a bee line for her as she delivered her dishes to the kitchen droid. 

“There you are,” Finn uttered, his eyes bright, and followed Rose around to the watering station. “I heard you haven’t left your project in days. Any luck?”

Rose beamed with pride over her shoulder as she filled her canteen, nodding enthusiastically. 

“Don’t overreact cause it’s still a secret but-... It’s done. The anti-tracking device. It’s done.”

“Damn, Rose,” Finn was exuberant, and pulled her into a side hug. She stumbled against him slightly, eyes wide. “Ah, sorry, I-,”

“Finn,” Rose mumbled softly, pulling away from him and examining his face. “Have you-... have you been drinking?”

The taller man’s face fell, and he looked around the mess tent with nervous eyes, giving her a shrug. But his eyes were glassy now with tears, and he scratched the top of his head, obviously trying to keep himself together. 

“Hey, let’s… let’s go somewhere, kay?” Rose spoke softly and took his hand, feeling just the tiniest echo of that old flame she’d held for him. 

It was mostly gone now, but some sort of love remained. And it seemed very much like Finn needed her help. 

They chose a spot on the outskirts of camp, just at the jungle’s edge. Flora and fauna of all kinds were making a cacophonous racket within the dark shapes of leaves and bracken, tittering away in the falling light of evening. Rose guided Finn to an overturned log and they both sank to a seat, close, heads bowed together to better hear and talk quietly. 

“Something wrong?” Rose asked, her tone gentle. 

Finn shook his head slightly, his expression splitting to one of discomfort. 

“I dunno if I can tell you, what with… y’know the-... our history, I mean.” Finn paused, splaying his hands out, expression genuine and earnest. “I just don’t want to hurt you. I’m still torn up about the kiss and-,”

Rose interrupted him with a soft laugh. “Wait, Finn? Are you-... are you talking about  _ our _ kiss? You made it clear that you don’t have feelings for me. It’s water under the bridge.”

Finn nodded, pushing his lips together and gazing out upon the crowd of Resistance forces going about their evening. 

“Sure, I just… there’s something about that I didn’t… really come clean on,” he continued, folding his hands together, elbows resting on his knees. 

Rose studied his face in silence, recognizing a deep confession was coming. 

“I… I love you, Rose, you’re… my best friend aside from Rey,” Finn began awkwardly, fidgeting with the cuff of one of his brown gloves. “That kiss… it was my first from a girl and I-,”

He broke off, seemingly unable to continue. 

Rose tucked her arm into the curve of his elbow and scoot closer, relief flooding her insides, a tight, unhappy sickness she’d been holding on to since his rejection evaporating into the wind. 

Finn looked over at her and Rose smiled encouragingly. But the words had dried up on Finn’s tongue, ever hesitant to commit to anything terrifying, his first instinct to run. 

Rose glanced back out into the sea of soldiers, noting a bobbing head of dark, curly hair shifting through the crowd, obviously searching eagerly for someone. Her mouth split into a grin. 

“So… if Rey and I are your best friends, what does that make Poe?” she questioned softly. 

Finn let out a low groan and buried his face in his hands. 

“So-... okay, yeah. I should just… say it,” Finn muttered to himself, working up the courage to speak, and raised his head. But his eyes spotted Poe in the distance, searching for him, and he croaked. “Oh, boy.”

Rose watched as the two men’s gazes connected, and Poe stopped in his place, a hesitant grin appearing shakily on his otherwise cocky face. He was waiting for permission, unwilling to approach unless he was wanted. 

Finn turned to Rose again with a soft sigh. 

“Poe and I were-... playing a drinking game and I-... I kind of-,” Finn started to explain. “I did what you did.”

Rose laughed, her heart swelling with joy for her friends, and she wrapped her arms around Finn’s neck, pulling him into a tight hug. 

“And let me guess… then you ran away?”

She glanced over at Poe who was watching the pair of them with a sunken expression, his strong arms crossed over his torso, tilted with his weight on one foot, tapping his boot impatiently. Rose waved him over behind Finn’s back, then kissed Finn’s cheek as she pulled away. 

Poe trotted over eagerly, and Finn got to his feet quickly as he approached, eyes wide. 

“You ran off,” Poe said accusingly, slugging a fake punch into Finn’s arm. 

Finn flinched anyway and scratched the back of his neck, avoiding Poe’s gaze. But the pilot’s next move removed any sense of awkwardness as he slid his arm right around Finn’s waist, behind his back, and pulled the other man right into his side. 

Finn burned with joy, blinking rapidly, and averted his gaze as Poe turned his attention to Rose, holding the other man against his side until Finn relented and slipped an arm around his shoulders. 

“Hey, Tico,” Poe grinned confidently, tipping his head toward her in acknowledgment. “Heard you got a toy for me to try.”

“Oh,” Rose got to her feet in excitement, having momentarily forgotten all about the anti-tracking device. “Yeah, yes. Um-... you wanna see it?”

“Sure, we got time,” Poe replied with exuberance, gesturing back toward her office area within the cave. “Lead the way.”

“Hell yeah,” Poe remarked, bending over the anti-hyperspace tracking device and prodding one of the numerous coils that ran along the outside of the hunk of tech. “This is what I’m talkin’ about. How’d you learn enough to counter this?”

Rose stiffened under Poe’s stern eye as it was trained on her, giving him an unsteady smile. 

“Oh uh-... well, there-,”

“She’s working with a spy in the Order,” Finn confessed for her, his face warm and soft with affection as, during his inspection of the device, Poe had not once let go of his hand. 

“Finn!” Rose shouted at him in outrage. “How do you even know that? No one’s supposed to know!”

“Of course I knew!” A look of hurt passed over Finn’s face. “The General told me.”

“Leia told you? Then why didn’t she tell me? Why didn’t  _ you _ tell me?!” It was Poe’s turn to look offended, and he dropped Finn’s hand, pointing to his chest as if he should be the most important person in Finn’s life. 

“I told you just now!” Finn retorted with a fierce roll of his eyes. 

“Who’s the spy?” Poe demanded, leveling his gaze on Rose again, hands on his hips, eyes blazing with attitude. 

“Uh-...,” Rose made a noncommittal sound and looked to Finn, her brows raised. 

“I don’t know who, Leia wouldn’t tell me,” Finn confessed with a shake of his head. “Rose?”

Rose hesitated, her mouth feeling like chalk, but she regained her confidence quickly and shook her head. 

“No, nope, I cannot tell you,” she spoke firmly and turned her back on the two men, beginning to clean up the work station area. 

“Sure, fine, leave your friends out of the loop,” Poe tried the guilt trip, but Finn was already moving forward, and he placed a hand on Rose’s shoulder. 

She turned toward him and Finn gave her a comforting smile. 

“Hey, I get it. Just-... be careful, okay?”

“Thanks, Finn.” But she broke away from him as quickly as possible, wanting to avoid the guilt she felt as he looked at her with such genuine care, guilt that came from the way she’d been feeling about said spy lately. 

“Poe, you have any missions coming up that might put you in the vicinity of the Order?” Rose asked instead as she returned spanners and other tech paraphernalia to their home locations. There was so much to clean after days of working on her project. 

Poe looked to her with a nod, but made a noncommittal sound and tilted his head to the side. 

“I mean… right now we’re on recruitment stand by. Finn and I are supposed to fly out to Takodana in two days, meetin’ up with Maz to accept some new recruits.”

Rose nipped at her bottom lip as she thought, knowing it wasn’t very likely for the First Order to search for them on such a back-water planet that they’d already battled on. 

“Would you be willing to make a detour that could potentially endanger you if my tech doesn’t work?” Rose asked in a small voice, her lips pulled in a sheepish grin. 

Poe’s face gained an excited look, but Finn reached out an arm and pressed a hand to Poe’s chest, his own expression one of concern. 

“Poe, let’s hear her out first, kay?”

Poe rolled his head with his eyes, taking Finn’s hand from his chest and holding it, their fingers entwined. Rose felt a little flash of jealousy in how touchy Poe was, just because it seemed so adorable. 

Her fingers flexed within the leather of Hux’s gloves, the tips of her fingers tingling at the thought. 

“It’s Rose, Finn. She’s a genius. Anything she wants us to do will be worth it, dangerous or not.”

Rose bloomed with pride at Poe’s speech and gave Finn a smug grin with a tilt of her chin, crossing her arms over her chest as she waited for her friend's acceptance. 

“You’re gonna have us approach a star destroyer to test your anti-tracker, aren’t you?” Finn asked in a deadpan voice. 

Rose nodded with a grin. 

“Yeeeeeah, let’s do it,” Poe turned toward Finn eagerly, nodding his head with the boyish excitement the pilot was known for. 

Finn looked skeptical, but he nodded, prompting Poe to whoop with a raucous energy, turning back to the clunky durasteel device. 

“So, how do we install this sucker?”

Rose shook her head. “You don’t. I do.Though if you and Finn could use your muscle to load it up onto the Falcon for me, that would be great.”

“I’ll help!” a familiar voice piped up from a distance. The trio turned their heads as one in the direction of the sound. 

Rey approached the circle, giving Rose a kind smile and Finn and Poe a wave. 

“If you don’t mind, that is. I need a break from meditation. Some mechanics' work will be useful.”

“Oh, yes!” Rose responded, as shocked as she was enticed by this notion. “Sure, it would be great to have some help!”

Poe and Finn lifted the heavy anti-tracker from Rose’s lab area and through a series of scuffled steps and puffs of breath, carted it away onto the Falcon. Rose and Rey followed leisurely behind. Every now and then the device would start to tip, but would right itself mysteriously with a light wave of the jedi’s hand. Rose took note each time she did so, a chill skittering down her spine to be able to witness such happenings. 

Ten minutes later, she was seated cross-legged in the belly of the falcon across from Rey, spanner in one hand and a sonic-screwdriver in the other, tightening bolts to connect the device to the hull of the ship, stabilizing it. 

Finn and Poe were up in the cockpit doing who knew what. It was quiet except for the whirring of background machinery and bleeps and bloops of tech. 

Rey was dressed in some mix-matched amalgam of her original clothing: gray cropped pants, scavenger boots, a gray tank and off-white gauze that wound itself over her bound breasts and draped down by her legs, for style. Her hair was up in one bun, the rest hanging down, waving over her back, wild but beautiful. 

Rose snuck little glances at her as she worked, enamored to be this close to someone she had only heard tales about passed along by within the Resistance. 

Her first thought in examining her face was that she looked so lonely. 

But Rey caught her staring and her face lit up with a bright and brilliant smile. 

Rose blushed slightly and looked away, ashamed at being caught. 

“Leia told me you joined the Resistance with your sister,” Rey began conversationally. “She’s told me about Paige. Sounds like a fantastic woman.”

Rose blinked up at Rey in surprise, then nodded her head with a slight smile. “Yeah, Paige was the best. I really miss her.”

Rey fell quiet as she opened a side panel in the ship, searching for the right power coupling to connect to the tracker. 

“It’s interesting to me how people come together to fight for a cause,” the Scavenger remarked as she worked. “It’s… inspiring really, how it almost feels like…”

“Like a family,” Rose offered. She knew Rey’s background, of course: abandoned in a desert with no one to look out for her. 

“Yeah,” Rey agreed, smiling. “Exactly that.”

The concept of family reminded Rose of Leia’s sorrow only days before, of the look on her face when she spoke of her errant son, the one who refused to come back to her, who was fighting on the wrong side of the war. 

She thought of the blonde woman painted on the cave wall by a lonely little boy who had likely known nothing more about her aside from her love of flowers… 

Rose had heard rumors about Rey, and of course understood that rumors were silly, but they enticed her now, seated here and alone with her. Perhaps Rey might be the one to understand her current predicament. 

She finished with the bolts on the device and paused, studying Rey as she worked, unsure of how to ask the question or if it was even polite to do so. 

But Rey opened the door for her. 

“You want to ask me something?” she asked with a little laugh, wiping her damp forehead with the back of her hand. “Go ahead.”

Rose blanched, hesitating in wonder at how she knew, but swallowed her disconcertion and took a deep breath. 

“Are the rumors about you and Kylo Ren true?”

Rey’s eyes widened like an owls, her lips pressing thinly together, as if she hadn’t expected  _ that _ to come out of Rose’s mouth. But the barest hint of a blush covered her cheeks, even as her expression went steely. 

“That depends.” Rey’s voice was slightly sharp. “What have you heard?”

Rose backpedaled quickly. “I-I-I’m… sorry, this is none of my business! I’m… wow, so sorry.” 

Rey had the decency to laugh, her sharp-edges fading quickly. 

“You don’t seem like a gossip so there must be a reason you asked,” Rey kindly offered. “I won’t bite.”

Rose focused on the scuff patterns she’d accidentally made on part of the durasteel casing while on comms with Hux. He’d scolded her, but his voice had been warm, full of concern and worry. He’d acted like it wasn’t, but Rose had felt it burrow straight into the very core of her. 

She’d started to wonder if… just maybe… 

And then he had lied. The tentative trust she had built for him was gone in an instant. 

Rose hesitantly ventured forward with her question. “Is it true you’re in love with him?”

Rey’s hands stilled in her work but she did not look up. She kept her eyes downcast, and her expression hollowed, becoming something sad and forlorn; something broken. The jedi breathed deeply, sniffed as if defending against tears, and rested her elbows on her bent knees. 

“I don’t know,” Rey admitted honestly, meeting Rose’s gaze. “I-... I thought so, and maybe? But Kylo made it quite clear to me he believes he belongs where he is.”

Rose was silent a long moment before responding. 

“Do you… want him to come back? Does Leia?”

Rey’s gaze was sad but coupled with a genuine smile, one of slight hope. 

“Leia has almost lost hope. I-...,” she paused as if to make entirely certain of her feelings before speaking. “I believe there is good in him, but he won’t leave me alone and sometimes-... the things he offers me are just too tempting.”

Rose was surprised to hear this, wondering how Kylo could continuously bug her despite her missions with Finn and Poe, and exactly how he was tempting her. 

Her cheeks bloomed with color at an unwelcome and unbidden thought of General Hux trying to be tempting. He’d probably say something dumb like “come work for me”. Ashamed to even be pondering such notions, Rose banished the thought and returned her attention to Rey. 

“Do you see him often?” Rose asked, careful not to seem too eager. 

“Every night,” Rey snorted with a tone of regret. “We’re… connected somehow, in the Force. When I sleep I cannot keep him away. The meditation lessons with Leia make me stronger, but it’s not enough.”

Rose was unable to find words adequate to describe how much that would suck, so she mouthed “wow” instead and kept her head down to her work. Rey returned to work as well, eager to remove herself from the conversation, and soon the two women had finished installing the device.

Rey hopped to her feet and offered a hand to Rose, who took it, and the taller woman helped lug her to her feet, giving her a warm smile. 

But as Rey turned to push up the grate above them and exit, Rose stopped her with a hand on her arm. 

“Rey-... wait.”

The jedi paused and turned back to look at Rose expectantly. 

Rose felt a broiling fear in her stomach. This felt stupid, but Paige wasn’t around and if she talked to Leia, she worried that she’d…

Rose closed her eyes and summoned all of her courage, blurting out the question she really wanted to ask. 

“If Kylo Ren would come back, if he-... if he were to be on the side of the Resistance, would you love him?”

Rose opened her eyes to Rey’s warm smile, feeling her hand touch to her arm in a friendly yet affectionate manner. 

“Yes,” Rey confessed easily. “Why do you ask?”

Rose let out a worried laugh, definitely not confident enough to express her own misdeeds with the spy she handled. But she rubbed the back of her neck and stretched, feeling relief down to her very bones that she wasn’t alone in getting a little too close to the enemy. 

But partial truths were safe to share. “It’s just… I’m working with a turncoat in the First Order and they’re giving me mixed signals about who they’re really working for.” 

Rey’s gaze was amused and knowing, as well as the half-smile that graced her lips. 

“Ah, well… at least they’re halfway there. Maybe all they need is a little push.”

Rose collapsed onto her bed by the time she made it back to her room, already exhausted from days of little sleep. She’d worked so hard and so long on the anti-tracking device for the Resistance. Not bothering to get up to change, she smushed her face into the pillow and stared down at the floor beside her bed, eyes lighting on her datapad. 

Her gaze focused on the blank indicator light, waiting the few seconds it usually took for it to blink with bated breath and a swell of hope that somehow Hux would have reached out to her. It remained stubbornly unlit, and Rose reached over the side of the bed for the device, rolling onto her back to view it better. 

Nothing was there. The communication program was as blank as it had been before. There were no missed communication hails either. 

Rose was filled with an overwhelming disappointment. She tried to convince herself that the reason was her frustration over his withholding information, even though that wasn’t working so well. 

If she were being honest with herself, the real reason would be the fact that she had gotten used to hearing from him. Maybe, just maybe, Rose was missing him. 

She spent the last few moments before sleep watching the screen for a message, her comms link in her ear. 

But her eyes drooped and, unable to keep them open any longer, Rose reluctantly lay the pad on the floor and turned over onto her side, her back to the device.

As she drifted off, she pondered Rey’s words of wisdom, and exactly what might be the best way to give General Hux that little push he needed… 

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Comments keep authors fed and willing to write! If you liked this, please leave a comment, even if it's just an emoji expressing your feelings! 
> 
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